Settling Accounts
by Kurt
Summary: Chapter 12 re-written. After 25 years, the daughter of Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling returns to the U.S. to settle up her father's unfinished business. Rated R for violence.
1. Departure

The sun was bright, almost painfully bright at the Buenos Aires airport. The airport was a teeming mass of humanity; the city in miniature. Passengers entered, families bid each other goodbye. There were backpacking American students returning to their home country after jaunting all over South America. There were representatives of the small Argentinian middle class, some flying to other parts of Argentina, some flying to Disney World, which was a perenially popular location. There were captains of industry flying hither and yon to oversee their business interests.  
  
A long, black stretch limousine pulled up to the `Departing Flights' section. A swarthy man in a chauffeur's uniform got out, ran around to the back door, and opened it. He assisted the two women inside in getting out and then opened the trunk, removing suitcases from inside. Once done, he stepped to the two women, drew himself up in a military attention stance, and waited.  
  
"Thank you, Ramon," the older woman said in accented Spanish. "Please wait here with the car, but if you need to move it, then go ahead.. I'll call you on the car phone when I need you."  
  
"Yes, ma'am," he said. "If I may...good luck to the senorita on her trip to America."  
  
The younger woman smiled at him. Although she was very beautiful, her smile was vaguely frightening. "Thank you, Ramon, I'll do fine." Her Spanish, unlike her mother's, betrayed only upper-crust Buenos Aires, not foreign birth.  
  
Ramon did as he was told and got back behind the wheel. A few minutes later, a policeman whistled piercingly and pointed at him. He shrugged and drove the car away, circling the airport until she called for him again.  
  
The younger woman began to gather her bags and walked into the airport. Her mother followed her.  
  
"You don't need to do this, you know," she said in English.  
  
"I want to do this, Mother," the younger woman said. She switched to her mother's native tongue without a thought.  
  
"It's dangerous."  
  
The younger woman wheeled and looked at her mother. Her maroon eyes fixed on her.  
  
"You tell me this is dangerous? Excuse me, mother, didn't you spend years of your life with a shotgun and pistol in the barrios of Newark?"  
  
Maria Alvarez, who a lifetime and a continent ago had been known as Clarice Starling, sighed and put a hand on her daughter's arm. "That was different. I was trained, for one thing."  
  
"And you trained me," Susana Ardelia Alvarez answered back. Her head flicked in annoyance, the way her father's had. "I know what I'm doing, mother."  
  
"Do you know what will happen to you if they find out who you really are?" Starling implored. "I can't protect you there."  
  
"Nothing will happen to me," Susana said. "Mother, I am twenty-one years old. I do not need a protector."  
  
Starling sighed. Since the death of her husband six months previously, she had felt powerless. Thankfully, Dr. Alonso Alvarez died quickly, without suffering, of a heart attack. He had enough time to tell his wife and child goodbye. He died a free man, without anyone ever knowing that he had once been Dr. Hannibal Lecter. But he lived on in his only daughter, who had inherited his mind as well as his eyes. And now that daughter was determined to go to America. Starling didn't allow her daughter to go as much as acquiesce to her going: like her father, Susana would not be denied.  
  
"I'll call you when I arrive," Susana said. She walked to the ticketing agent and checked her bags. She did not bother to bring any weapons with her, as her mother had worried that she had; knives were just as easy to get in America, and she did not anticipate that guns would be necessary.  
  
"You're being silly. It's been almost twenty-five years since we left the U.S.," Starling implored.  
  
"Mother, someone needs to settle up Father's accounts."  
  
"They're settled. This is stuff that happened before you were born."  
  
"He would want me to," Susana said fiercely. Starling sighed. Susana had inherited certain things from her mother as well as her father. Clarice Starling would have fought with anyone in an instant over a slur on her father's memory. So it was with Susana Alvarez.  
  
She knew her attempts to dissuade her daughter would be as successful as if she tried to hold back the Amazon river with her bare hands. Susana was a force of nature where her father was concerned.  
  
They arrived at the gate and sat to talk for a bit. Hopefully, Starling thought, she would be able to at least get her daughter to be careful. When they called for first-class boarding, Susana rose, hugged her mother, and stepped onto the plane without a second thought. With a sense of resignation, Starling lifted her cellular phone to call Ramon with the car. She watched the lumbering plane take off into the sky, bearing her only child in its maw. 


	2. Arrival in a Strange Land

That morning of July 12, 2025 was not so dissimilar from the years before in which Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling had fled to Argentina. Computers were faster and so were planes. But Buenos Aires to Miami was still a long flight, and Susana had ample time to amuse herself by keeping the stewardesses busy. She demanded coffee, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and poked critically at her meal, as if dissecting it. By the time the plane landed in Miami, the flight crew was more than happy to see her leave.  
  
Customs was the usual minor hassle. Susana produced her Argentinian passport and dutifully promised that she would not seek work while in the United States and that she would leave in ninety days. The Customs agent noted her English was excellent and sounded vaguely Southern. Susana told him her mother was from West Virginia, which was true. She told him her trip here was for pleasure, which was not. Her trip here was business. All business.  
  
Susana Alvarez Lecter – or so she liked to think of herself, even though she had no paperwork at all in that name – was duly admitted into the United States with plenty of time to catch her connecting flight. She crossed the airport to get to her departing gate, where she offered her ticket to the gate agent.  
  
"Washington, D.C.?" asked the perky gate agent.  
  
"Of course," Susana said, and got on that plane. It was a shorter hop, but still she was glad to reach the final airport. At Reagan National, she got her bag and headed for the car rental counters. America certainly seemed to be a country of paperwork, she thought. She handed over her credit card and was given the promised car – a 2025 Mustang, smelling of new vinyl. It was a sports model, pure gasoline engine, none of this hybrid stuff.  
  
Her mother would have liked this car, she thought, pumping the accelerator. It was bright red. The engine roared as she dropped it into drive and pulled out of the lot, leaving a trail of scorched rubber behind. She found her way to the Beltway, then to her hotel. Although she had never been in the U.S. before, she had studied maps of Washington and the nearby Virginia and Maryland suburbs.  
  
Her hotel room was registered in the name Susan Starling. Her father would have been displeased at that, she knew – it was too obvious. But part of him would have found it amusing and daring. Susana offered a credit card in that name, got her room, and was pleased. It was a suite, with a nice view of the city. She could see the Capitol and the White House, standing out like white pieces of ivory against the darkness of the nighttime city.  
  
She scarfed a Coke out of the minibar and got out the Yellow Pages. She indulged her mother in a quick call to tell her she was all right and had arrived safely. When Starling began to try suggesting that her daughter come home, Susana simply told her she would come home when she was done and not before. Then she said goodbye and hung up.  
  
Next, she called room service and indulged herself. There was plenty of chocolate in the minibar, but she needed nutrition. She could be as discriminating as her father when it came to food, and she warned the room service people that the sushi had better be fresh. The room service person she spoke to swore on his own honor that the sushi would be fresh. Susana elected to take him at his word. After all, she could always sample his sweetbreads tomorrow if they weren't.  
  
As she looked out at the city below her, she flipped through the Yellow Pages. The page she stopped at was 'Knife Merchants.' Tomorrow, it would be time to get a Harpy, Daddy's favorite. And a Spyderco Civilian. After all, Susana had some up close and personal work to do. The hotel room had a computer terminal, but she refrained from using it; even now, it was possible to track what one did on the Internet.  
  
She took a memo pad from the desk and began to jot names on it. Names of people she needed to see. Some, she intended simply to convey her father's thanks to. Others needed to be punished for their various sins against her father. The degree of punishment varied.  
  
"Nat'l Tattler – Smithfield, Jameson, Dover" she wrote first.  
  
Under that, she added "Barney".  
  
She added "Crawford" but crossed it out a moment later. She wouldn't be able to get to Jack Crawford unless she remembered to pick up a Ouija board. In its place, she wrote Verger, Margot. She stared at the name for a few moments, trying to remember what her father had told her of this person and why.  
  
Next, after doodling a bit as she thought, she added "Mapp". 


	3. On account of Mr. Smithfield

The Chicago offices of the National Tattler are easy to miss. It is a nondescript building in the city, without any large sign. The parent company of the National Tattler learned this might be a wise move many years ago, when one of their editors was killed by the Red Dragon. The years had not been kind to the building. It had become steadily more worn out, almost dilapidated. The paper inside, however, was doing quite well. Its target market remained strong. The year 2025 boasted as many foolish, uneducated people who would believe a paper's claim that a new miracle drug will destroy cancer as previous years had.  
  
Jason Smithfield, a reporter for the Tattler, strolled out of the office and towards the street where his car was parked. Smithfield had been a reporter for five years with the Tribune, until his habit of making up details he did not bother to check got him in trouble with that paper. He had spent the past three years writing about Bigfoot appearing in various states, vampires attacking trailer parks, and several lurid articles about the latest evil acts of Dr. Hannibal Lecter.  
  
Smithfield did not know Hannibal Lecter and had been a child when he escaped custody in Memphis. He didn't have any particular grudge against the doctor. Nor was he a fan of the doctor, as so many on the Internet seemed to be. Lecter was simply a way of selling Tattlers to him. He had gleefully located Lecter in Missouri, L.A., Chicago, New York, and wherever a bizarre crime might be found. It was great, he thought – it wasn't like the guy was going to sue him.  
  
As he walked to his car, he noticed a pretty young woman eying him. He checked out her body, as was his custom to do to any woman in his path who was under the age of forty. Instead of looking offended, she smiled at him and tilted her head.  
  
Hey, now this might be fun. She was quite young, and had a sinfully good body. Since his divorce, he had been without female companionship on anything resembling a regular basis. He slowed his walk and allowed her to catch up with him.  
  
"Hi," he said. "You lost?"  
  
"Oh, no," Susana Alvarez Lecter said. "Do I look lost?"  
  
"Not really," Smithfield grinned.  
  
"I haven't seen you around before," he noted. "You new here?"  
  
"I don't work for the Tattler," she assured him. "I was just looking for someone."  
  
"Who?"  
  
"Jason Smithfield," she purred.  
  
Smithfield's grin grew wider. "That's me."  
  
Susana had already known this. But to get the guy off the street, she looked at him with wide eyes. "Really?"  
  
"Yup."  
  
"I wanted to ask you a couple of questions, actually."  
  
Smithfield gestured up the street. "No problem. How about asking them over a drink? There's a nice little bar up the way."  
  
"Okay," Susana said naively. They started off towards the bar together.  
  
"So what's your name?" he asked.  
  
"Susie," Susana giggled. "I'm a journalism student at the U of Chicago."  
  
"Oh, really?"  
  
"Yep. And I wanted to ask you a few questions about Hannibal Lecter."  
  
Smithfield's eyebrow raised. "Hannibal the Cannibal? What about him?"  
  
"Well…I mean…you have ALL those articles about him. You must know a lot about him."  
  
"Yeah, I'm an expert on Hannibal," Smithfield allowed with false modesty. "The Tattler's worked with the FBI, you know. I've worked with them to try to help them locate him and bring him to justice."  
  
"Is he still in the U.S., do you think?"  
  
"Definitely. Lecter loves cultured stuff, there's no way he'd go to another country."  
  
Susana had to hold herself back from grinding her teeth. He was correct only on her father's love of culture, but there was plenty of that in Buenos Aires. This was something she had always disliked about Americans. They believed that any other country was some sort of stinking, cultureless pit. Her early life had been one of private schools, visiting art museums, and being educated by her father in the finest things in life.  
  
"I heard he went to South America," she objected, still playing the dippy college girl to the hilt.  
  
"South America? No way. It's too hot there, for one thing. Lecter hates the heat."  
  
Susana thought briefly of the summers she had spent on private beaches, where her father had taught her to swim. No matter; this man's livelihood of spreading lies about her father would end soon.  
  
At the bar, Smithfield continued to regale her with stories of the fierce murderer and tried to impress her with his intimate knowledge of Hannibal Lecter's mind. Susana touched the Harpy clipped to the waistband of her skirt. But no, here was not the place. Next thing to do was to get this foul, dumpy man to go somewhere private with her.  
  
"Well, I'm probably keeping you from your work and stuff," she said with a perky smile. It made her cheeks ache and she was galled inside to play the dumb college kid, but it was necessary.  
  
"Nah, I'm done for the day," he assured her.  
  
It wasn't terribly hard to wangle an invitation to his apartment. The living quarters were as squalid as the man: cheap furniture, overflowing ashtrays. The only thing that even vaguely impressed Susana was the laptop parked on the desk. She would take that, when she was done.  
  
Smithfield offered her a drink, which she accepted. It was a California red wine, inexpensive, and Susana took one sip and judged it inferior. She took a peek in his kitchen and decided it was the kitchen of a man who was neither very good at preparing food nor enjoyed it. A pity. Her father had always liked cooking.  
  
Eventually, of course, the man tried to kiss her. She let him, pretending to enjoy it, even though had she been offered the choice between kissing Jason Smithfield and a large hog, she would have had to sit down and think about it. As the man's greasy fingers slid around her, trying to slip open the buttons of her blouse, her attentions wandered down to her skirt.  
  
Susana liked to shop very much, a trait she had inherited from her father. A bit of her mother's practicality had slipped in there as well. The skirt she wore was one from Banana Republic. While her father would have sniffed at such a store and its goods, it had its advantages. Among them were pockets – good, deep, well-stitched pockets. They came in quite handy. She placed one arm around the oaf fumbling with her blouse and reached for her back pocket with the other.  
  
Jason Smithfield didn't know quite what hit him. One moment, he was on his couch with the beautiful, bubbly coed. The next minute, her grip on him turned fierce and unbelievably strong. His hands were wrenched behind him and he heard a metallic click. Then, he was on his face on the living room floor. His nose was just above a cheap red plastic ashtray.  
  
"What are you doing?" he panted. He felt his hands and discovered he was handcuffed. A slow grin slid over his face.  
  
"Oh, you like it kinky," he said knowingly.  
  
"You could say that," Susana agreed. She grabbed up a handful of paper napkins and wedged them in his mouth. Smithfield frowned, but went along with it. His expression changed when she pulled the Harpy from her waistband and snapped it out.  
  
"You're a liar, Smithfield," she said.  
  
Smithfield made a pleading noise as his eyes tracked the hawkbilled blade of the Harpy.  
  
"Don't make noise, or I'll cut your tongue out," she threatened.  
  
He fell silent as the dead.  
  
"You, sir, are a liar. You tell lies about Hannibal Lecter. Not one single thing you said about him was right. But I'll tell you the truth."  
  
He began to sweat and whimpered through his improvised gag.  
  
"Hannibal Lecter was a better man than you. He lived in South America after fleeing the U.S. And he had a daughter along the way."  
  
Shockingly, she twirled for him.  
  
"Surprised? Don't be. I'm Susana Lecter. And I'm here to settle up my papa's accounts. Beginning with yours." She gestured at the apartment. "This apartment. Everything in it. All paid for by your lies about my papa."  
  
She reached under him and began to haul him into the kitchen. Although he was quite overweight, Susana had inherited her father's wiry strength. In the kitchen, she tied him to the handle of his refrigerator.  
  
"I don't know if you've done any real research into my papa," she said, "but I'll help you learn. We'll reenact one of his early murders."  
  
She overturned a knife block on the kitchen counter. Five or six cheap knives came tumbling out of the block. Searching the drawers, she found a few more knives and a tool box in an upper cabinet.  
  
"One of his early murders," she repeated. "Have you ever heard of 'Wound Man'? Papa was ever so proud of it."  
  
Smithfield apparently did. His eyes went wide.  
  
Despite his gag, he eventually did scream, and his screams were heard outside of the apartment. His neighbors, an older couple, simply looked at each other and wondered why their fat wretch of a neighbor was making all that noise.  
  
"Probably ran out of Twinkies," the husband said.  
  
The wife wasn't so sure. The sounds coming from the other side of the wall just seemed so wet. 


	4. An officer and a victim

David Jameson entered the offices of the National Tattler. He was uncharacteristically somber and nervous. In place of his usual khakis and denim shirt, he wore a black suit with a rarely worn, starched white shirt. He had dressed differently today to attend the funeral of a co-worker.  
  
"Hard to believe it, huh?" said Thomas Dover, another writer for the Tattler.  
  
"You're telling me," Jameson replied. "I mean, Smithfield wasn't a bad guy. Didn't have an enemy in the world."  
  
Apparently that assessment was incorrect. The police had found Jason Smithfield tied to his refrigerator with several knives and pencils sticking out of him. A hammer had been carefully implanted in his skull. It was a horrible way to die.  
  
And something about it nagged at David Jameson. Somehow, vaguely, it seemed familiar. He knew there wouldn't be the same pressure today to produce. Not after the funeral. So he banged out a quick article claiming that a Sasquatch had been spotted in a national park and settled down to do some research.  
  
After a few hours, he had something to show for his time. Jason Smithfield had been made to look like Wound Man, an old medical illustration showing 15th century surgeons what various battle wounds looked like. With an eerie feeling, David discovered that there had indeed been a prior murder like this – a murder many years ago. The murderer was none other than the Tattler's favorite criminal. Dr. Hannibal Lecter. An icy feeling invaded his stomach.  
  
Jameson was nervous. This made sense, but none of it was good. If there was a Lecter copycat out there, that was bad. A Lecter copycat who had noticed Smithfield's articles identifying Lecter in several crimes would have noticed his articles too. That was way, way bad.  
  
David Jameson got up. He decided to go home, get his pistol, and call the cops. Even if they didn't believe him they might give him protection for a few days. He wasn't going to become dinner for any psycho who was copying Lecter.  
  
As he headed for the door, he wondered. Could this be the real Lecter? No; Lecter would be way too old to be offing reporters. Even if he was still alive. As he left, the secretary flagged him down.  
  
"Dave! Dave! The police are here to see you." She pointed to the hallway.  
  
Jameson went out to the hall as ordered. There was a uniformed policewoman there waiting for him. When she saw him, she nodded and pointed.  
  
"David Jameson?" she asked.  
  
"That's me," he said. "What can I do for you?"  
  
"Come with me, please." She guided him into an empty conference room.  
  
Her tone was pure business. "We have reason to believe you're in danger."  
  
"Lecter copycat?" he said. An immense feeling of relief entered his stomach.  
  
She nodded. "Very good. I guess you've been doing some research yourself."  
  
"I have, yeah."  
  
"Well, since we know Dr. Lecter had dealt with the Tattler before, and now this, we're going to put you under police protection. We have a safe house all ready for you. With your permission, we want to try and use you as bait."  
  
Jameson couldn't help but dislike the sound of that. "Bait?"  
  
"Yes. We want the Tattler to publish an article by you stating that the copycat can't get you, that obviously the copycat isn't as smart as the real Lecter, that sort of thing. We'll publish a picture of the house that'll have the house number and the street sign in the picture. If they take the bait, boom." She clapped her hands. "One bad guy behind bars."  
  
"OK," Jameson said, already thinking about the instant book he would have ready to hit the market.  
  
"Are you willing to go along?" she said.  
  
He nodded. "I used to be in the Army," he said breezily. "I know my way around danger."  
  
"Great. Come on, then."  
  
"We need the article," he objected.  
  
"There's a computer at the safe house. You can email it from there. My orders are to get you there ASAP."  
  
They walked outside. A police cruiser sat waiting at the curb. The policewoman opened the back door for him.  
  
"Sorry," she smiled, "but I've got too much stuff in the front."  
  
Jameson didn't care. Actually, the back would be better. In a publicized court case twelve years ago, a young man being arrested had been shot by a rival gang while sitting in the back of a police cruiser. Ever since then, the fleets of most city police forces sported windows made of a new, light polycarbonate that was bulletproof. Although the back wasn't terribly comfortable, he felt safe. Like a shark cage, he thought.  
  
He glanced through the heavy wire mesh separating the front from the back at the police officer driving the car.  
  
"So how did you guys figure it out so quickly?"  
  
She grinned. "Same as you. We did some research. Found out that there was a prior Lecter murder done the same way."  
  
"You seem to have put this together awfully fast," he observed.  
  
"We had some intelligence," she explained.  
  
"Oh, really?" The reporter side of him took interest. "Tell me about it."  
  
"I'm afraid I can't," she said. "You can talk to my sergeant all you like. But in between the intel we received and the Smithfield murder, we had very good reason to believe that there's a Lecter copycat around." She put on her signal and pulled into a parking garage.  
  
"What can you tell me? Anything? I won't quote you if you don't want," he said.  
  
Jameson saw her eyes in the rearview as she thought. Maroon eyes. Very different and striking.  
  
And very wrong. Jameson suddenly felt uneasy.  
  
"Well," she said as she pulled the car into a free spot, "for one thing, we read what you wrote in that rag you call a paper about my papa."  
  
The policewoman turned to look at him then and cocked an eyebrow at him. She had taken off her hat.  
  
"Your…what?" he asked. He grabbed the mesh and pressed his fingers against it. "What the hell is going on here?"  
  
Susana Alvarez Lecter sighed, adjusted the damned itchy police uniform, and glared at him.  
  
"OK, I'll spell it out for you," she said. "You know, your pig friend didn't get it either. What is it with you people?"  
  
"My pig friend? Come on. I want to get out of this car right now."  
  
"Well, you're not. Short version here, cause I'm pressed for time. I'm Susana Lecter, and you have written nasty things about my papa in your paper. So I'm going to kill you. Okay?"  
  
He threw himself against the mesh. "Let me out of here!" he shrieked.  
  
Susana reached into the box on the passenger seat of the police cruiser. In it was a plastic bowl, a bottle of ammonia, and a bottle of Clorox bleach. She had bought all three at a supermarket for cash before dropping by the Tattler office.  
  
"In a little bit," she said. She dumped the bleach into the bowl.  
  
"You know, in my research on you, I found out you did some nice work in L.A.," she said conversationally. She ignored Jameson's pounding and screaming to be let out.  
  
"You wrote an excellent piece on the death penalty in California," she said. "When I read it, I really felt like you had gone in there."  
  
"What? Oh, that. I did. I did a lot of work on that. Look, lady, whatever you want. The Tattler will pay for me. Couple million, maybe."  
  
Susana had that much in her trust fund and ignored the offer.  
  
"Yes sir, you described the gas chamber so eloquently, it was like I was actually there. That's why I don't understand why you ended up at a dump like the Tattler."  
  
"Listen," he said. "I didn't mean anything about your pop. Really. It was just something to sell papers. And people love Lecter, he's like the epitome of evil. They eat him up."  
  
"*I* loved my papa," Susana said fiercely, "and the eating part is right, but you've got it the wrong way round."  
  
"Don't do this," Jameson pleaded. "Come on. You got a story you want to tell, don't you? Anything you want, you got it. Just don't kill me."  
  
"But what I want is to kill you," Susana said. "You were part of it. You wrote those lies about my papa right along with Smithfield. It's not fair for him to pay and you to get off scot-free, is it?"  
  
Jameson smacked the windows with the flat of his hand. Had they been glass, he might have broken free. But a court case a dozen years ago had sealed his fate. The polycarbonate was tough and strong.  
  
"Come on," he whined.  
  
"I thought you were in the Army," she said. "So die with some nobility, will you?"  
  
Jameson started to cry and pounded the mesh. Susana dumped the bottle of ammonia into the bowl with the bleach. Almost immediately, a gray cloud of gas rose from the bowl.  
  
"Boring conversation, anyway," Susana said, and opened her door and got out. She slammed the door shut and stood warily a few feet away.  
  
Jameson pounded on the windows and screamed to be let out. She watched him idly as he alternately begged her and tried to get through the heavy steel mesh to get at the bowl of poison in the front seat. For a moment, Susana thought of the Plastic Man cartoons she had watched as a child. Her father had never approved of cartoons, but her mother had allowed them as a hidden pleasure. Jameson was not as successful as Plastic Man at extruding himself through the grate. He only seemed to be cutting himself.  
  
"Help! Police!" he screamed, realizing that she wasn't going to be swayed.  
  
"Police? Got some right here," she said. She ambled over to the red Mustang parked not far away. From its trunk, she pulled out two heavy bundles of carpet. She hauled one over to the cruiser and then went back for the other one. She unwrapped one to reveal the face of an older man in a police uniform. His throat was slit and he was very, very dead. She heaved the body onto the trunk of the cruiser and turned its face so that it was looking into the rear window of the cruiser, at the bugged-out eyes of David Jameson.  
  
Jameson screamed. Susana looked reproachfully at him. "Is that any way to speak to an officer of the law?" She returned the roll of carpet to her trunk and emptied the other one to reveal a woman approximately her own size. Unlike her partner, this one was dressed only in a simple oversized T-shirt. Out of the goodness of her heart, she had lent Susana her uniform. It had only taken one quick, vicious slash of the Harpy to convince her to be so generous.  
  
"She's out of uniform," Susana observed, propping her up against the door of the cruiser, "but we'll forgive her that." She cocked a foot and watched Jameson. This garage only employed a person at the gate, to collect money from drivers as they left. There were no cameras and there was no one to watch them. And if anyone did happen to come up this way, she would shoot first and ask questions later. Susana's mother had taught her that sometimes this was necessary, and it was a good lesson.  
  
The interior of the cruiser was no longer visible. The gray mist blocked out everything. Susana decided to grab the badge off the older cop as a gift for her mother. As she rolled over the body to get at the badge, there came a loud sound. Through the poison gray mist came the twisted face of David Jameson. His features had gone bright pink, and drool slicked his chin. His nose ran freely. His eyes were bloodshot and ran with tears. But they were still focused on her.  
  
"Crazy…bitch…," he gasped out, pounding once weakly on the back window. He sank down onto the back seat, lost again in the fog.  
  
Susana scarfed the badge and put it in her pocket.  
  
"Well if you're going to be rude, then you can just stay in there," she said. She checked her watch. Fifteen minutes it had taken Mr. Jameson to die. He had held out for a while. Actually, he might still be alive in there, she thought as she took a small bag from her trunk.  
  
She took out a dress and shoes from the bag. Then she tossed the police jacket in the trunk and pulled the dress on over the uniform. Once she was covered, she removed the pants, shoes, and gunbelt and put them in the trunk. Her own shoes were much more comfortable and much more stylish. For a moment, she wondered if her mother had been forced to wear clodhopper shoes like that. In Buenos Aires, her mother had made a point of good shoes. Susana had always suspected her father had something to do with that, but had sensed that asking would be a poor idea.  
  
Susana didn't know if the police cruiser was airtight, and she didn't want to find out. Satisfied that Jameson had either already died or was going to shortly, she slid behind the wheel of her Mustang, closed the door, and put on some lipstick and eyeshadow. The car started and she pulled out, leaving the police cruiser in the concrete depths of the parking garage.  
  
The parking attendant took her money and let her out of the garage. He had no reason to connect the sexy young woman behind the wheel of a new Mustang with the no-nonsense cop who had just driven in before. Susana gave him a big smile, took her change, and raced back to the hotel room she had obtained in Chicago. One more Tattler employee to go. 


	5. Susana and her art

Thomas Dover was very, very frightened. 

Up until a few days ago, he had been one of the 'Lecter Three' at the National Tattler. He, along with Jason Smithfield and David Jameson, had written stories ascribing any number of murders to Hannibal Lecter. It had been great fun, they were good guys, and they had sold a ton of Tattlers detailing the alleged crimes of Hannibal Lecter in the meantime. 

But now, someone had stuck knives in all of Jason Smithfield's major organs in alphabetical order. That same someone had also killed two police officers, taken their patrol car, and grabbed Dave Jameson out of the office. The patrol car had become a gas chamber on wheels. They'd found the cruiser in a parking garage, the two dead cops nearby, and Dave gassed to death in the rear seat. 

And that left him. 

The Chicago police department was livid, as they were when one of their own went down. But they weren't forgetting him. They had two cops detailed to him. The cops stayed in his apartment with him. They followed him to work. They went with him everywhere he went. Their guns made him feel safer. But still, he was frightened. 

He had stayed home from work today, offering to e-mail in his article. He had written a lengthy exposè on the two murders. Two hundred dollars to the right people had earned him a picture of Jason Smithfield tied to his refrigerator with knives and pencils sticking out of him and another of David Jameson's corpse lying in the gas-filled back seat of the cruiser. Neither Jay nor Davey would have minded, he thought. They'd have expected it. But his editors deemed the pictures too gruesome, and so he simply wrote an article detailing every last detail in loving detail. 

Unlike his co-workers, Dover had actually done some research into Hannibal Lecter. His filing cabinet contained the results of numerous Freedom of Information requests for Lecter files from the various legal agencies that had dealt with the good doctor. He'd always felt that his Lecter articles were more realistic and genuine. 

Dover's interest in Lecter stemmed from putting two and two together. He had grown up in a small town in West Virginia. As a boy, his family had been poor, and so he tended to gravitate to other poor kids to play with. And one of the kids he had played with had been the daughter of the town's night marshal. Clarice had been her name, and it hadn't been until much later – when Buffalo Bill had been killed – that he realized his childhood playmate was none other than Special Agent Clarice Starling of the FBI. 

Dover had toyed with the idea of contacting her, but thought she would simply blow him off as a reporter seeking inside access to the FBI. And yes, he had to admit, that had been part of it. But part of him did simply want to reunite with his erstwhile friend. He had tried to head off the Tattler article after the Feliciana Fish Market botch or at least get it toned down, but there was no way that the editors would leave that one alone. And shortly after that, Starling had disappeared, presumably with Lecter. 

And now, after all these years, it was all coming back. Dover was good enough to realize that it had to be Lecter-related somehow. That was the only real link between Smithfield, Jameson, and him. Plus, Smithfield's murder had been a copy of Lecter's sixth victim. 

So he had gone to ground with his two cops guarding him. And that was where he stayed. The cops were good guys; they assured him that everything was going to be OK. They went and got food or had it delivered without complaint. Of course, they enjoyed his big-screen TV and the premium sports channels that he subscribed too. But he was more than willing to let them enjoy it for his own protection. 

As he sat in his computer chair, one of the cops was sprawled out on the couch. He was a large black man named Rodell, and he would have not looked out of place on the defensive line of the Chicago Bears. Detective Rodell glanced over at him. 

"Hey, man," he said amiably. "Don't look so worried." 

Rodell's walkie-talkie buzzed. Even in the year 2025, police communications equipment still made its users sound robotic and machinelike. 

"Sixteen-alpha, report in," came a woman's voice. 

Rodell raised a hand. "Hold that thought. I gotta take this." He pulled the walkie-talkie from his belt and pressed the transmit key on the side. His voice lost its jovial tone and became the businesslike tone of all cops on duty. 

"Sixteen-alpha," he said crisply. 

"Sixteen-alpha, report FBI personnel en route to your location to interview your subject," the woman replied. "Name is Braxton, Tony."

"FBI personnel on route, ten-four. Do we have an ETA?" 

"Estimated twenty minutes, sixteen-alpha." 

"ETA twenty minutes, roger." 

"That's all, sixteen-alpha." 

"Roger. Sixteen-alpha out." 

"What does that mean?" asked Thomas Dover. 

"FBI's coming to see you," Rodell said jovially. 

"So what does that mean?" Dover persisted. He didn't mean to whine, but he was afraid, and he whined. 

Detective Rodell was used to this. He didn't mind. He grinned widely. 

"Means we'll have to get some more pizza!" He spread his arms wide. "We just got enough for the three of us. Just relax, man. They're those guys out of Quantico who track serial killers. They just wanna talk to you, that's all." 

Detective Rodell's partner, Detective Joe Polowski, was off getting the pizza. Rodell caught his partner on the radio and advised him of the incoming fibbie. Polowski laughed and promised to get more pizza. He figured he would be back before or just after the fibbie got there. 

"What's a fibbie?" asked Dover. 

"A fibbie?" Rodell's handsome, dark features cracked into a wide grin. "You know. Eff Bee Eye. So much more than us lowbrow local police." 

The grandfather clock in the corner struck six. Dover flinched. Lately, any loud noise made him flinch. That's what happened when an intelligent and cunning psycho was killing your friends and your name was next on the list. 

…

Special Agent Tony Braxton stepped out of the patrol car and glanced up at the apartment building. He turned to the patrolman driving. 

"Hey, thanks for the ride," he said. He tried to be as friendly as he could to local cops. Made for better relations. 

"No problem. Hey, whatever you can do to help catch that guy, go for it." 

The patrolman drove off into Chicago traffic and Agent Braxton took his briefcase and headed into the apartment building. In the lobby, he saw a young woman in a neat pantsuit standing by the elevator. He could tell immediately she was a cop. Part of it was the obvious gun under her jacket; part of it was her bearing. He knew cop, and she was cop.

She didn't disappoint him and flashed a badge. "Agent Braxton?" she asked. 

"Yes, that's me." 

"I'm Detective Stacy Rodell. You're here to interview Mr. Dover for Behavioral Sciences?" 

"Yep." 

"We're checking out everyone who gets in or out. Can I see your ID?" 

"No problem," Braxton said, and flipped it out. She examined it and nodded. Her hand came away from her jacket. For a moment, Braxton shivered, realizing that if she had doubted it she meant to draw her weapon and shoot him.

"Right this way," she said pleasantly and gestured to the elevator. In the elevator, she punched the button for the tenth floor. She blushed, muttered an expletive, and punched twelve. Braxton grinned.

"So what have you guys figured out about this perp?" she asked as the elevator began its trip up to the twelfth floor.

"The UNSUB? Well, we're looking at a few things. There's some evidence that Lecter ties in somehow." 

"Hannibal the Cannibal? Thought he'd be dead by now." 

"He may be," Braxton agreed. "Maybe the UNSUB thinks he's acting in Lecter's name or something. It's a tie between both murders. And the one was a copy of Lecter's sixth victim." 

"What about the other one?" 

"Lecter never used gas, but…," Agent Braxton thought for a moment about the best words to use. "The M.O. isn't like Lecter, and the signature isn't really like him either. Lecter liked to do stuff like make people into high-class stuff. Like the flautist whose sweetbreads he served to the board of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. He thought the guy played lousy flute, so he made him into an hors d'oeuvre. The Wound Man killing too. That was trying to make the guy into high art, an old piece of medical history." 

"So it's not the same." 

"Not exactly, no. It's someone developing their own signature. But there are two Lecter-like parts to it." 

"What are those?" 

"Well, first off, the planning. Whoever did this spent some time. They know how to plan and how to pull it off. I think they either live in Chicago or spend a lot of time here." 

_No, you dork, I just tipped the bellboy two hundred dollars and asked him for a parking garage that didn't have cameras_, Susana Alvarez Lecter thought. _He thought I was a call girl looking to please a kinky client who wanted to do it in a garage._

"What's the other?" 

"Enjoyment of suffering," he said promptly. "There doesn't seem to be any trophy-taking, although the police officers were missing their badges and guns, from what I understand, as well as the uniform missing from Officer Tyler. But whoever did this sat there, up close, and stabbed Smithfield multiple times, over and over. Heard his groans. Heard him begging to stop. When he died, he died hard. They also found footprints from Tyler's shoes – whoever was wearing them – standing right by the back window of the cruiser they found Jameson in. So whoever did it sat there and watched him die. Watched him beg. Didn't care." 

"I see," she said pleasantly. She tried to keep from preening. "What's their motive, do you think?" 

"Not sure," Braxton said. "If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say they're connected to Lecter. Probably read a lot about him. They see themselves as his guardian, or as a new incarnation of him, something like that." 

The elevator doors opened on the tenth floor. 

"Actually, I think it's because he was their daddy," Susana said pleasantly, and then acted quickly. She didn't know if Braxton was armed or not, and she didn't want this to become a gunfight anyway. She grabbed his arm, shifted her weight, and threw him out of the elevator as neat as you please. Braxton wasn't expecting it and went flying into the hallway wall. Susana pursued him and grabbed the Harpy from where it was clipped to her jacket pocket. With a firm click, the blade appeared in her hand like a malevolent sixth finger. 

"What the hell—" Agent Braxton got out, and then she was on him. He tried to get one hand up to protect himself. Unfortunately, his reaction was instinctual. Susana knew exactly what she wanted to do, and planned to go in deep to the side and slash his neck. As usual, reason won out over instinct. Braxton's carotid artery was neatly severed. 

Susana finished the job with another whack, and then dragged him down the hall. The maintenance staff maintained a closet on each floor with cleaning supplies, and she stopped at the tenth-floor hall closet. It was locked, but that was OK. Clarice Starling had been a tech agent once, and she had taught her daughter how to pick locks among other things. Susana had begun by learning to pick the lock on the cupboard in which her mother kept the sweets when she was six. After fifteen years of practice, the cheap spring lock on the hall closet held her back no longer than if she had a key. She popped it open and stuffed Braxton's body inside. They'd find him, but not until tomorrow. 

She had visited this floor before and hidden something for herself here. She grabbed it now: a plastic bag containing another suit. The one she had on now had a large stain of blood across the jacket, pants and blouse. She changed quickly, making sure to get all the stuff off her belt too. 

Susana was only able to plan this because she had the walkie-talkie she had taken from the female officer whose uniform and car she had borrowed. With it, she was able to eventually figure out where Dover had been stashed and how she could get up there. She had figured that eventually her mother's erstwhile employer would be called into play; it was just a matter of intercepting the guy en route and making plans to get in. Since she was able to listen in on the Chicago PD's transmissions, it was easy. Once she'd heard the local precinct discussing it on the radio, she simply had headed over to Dover's apartment building and waited.

Once she was changed, she took Braxton's briefcase and searched him for ID and a weapon. She found both. She closed the hall closet door and sat down. She pulled a pair of latex gloves from her pocket and opened the briefcase. 

There were case files and a few paperback books in there. Susana didn't want the paperbacks, so she threw them down the garbage chute. By carefully moving things around, she was able to get the plastic bag containing her dirty clothes wedged in where it would not be immediately visible. She slid his holster onto her belt on her right hip. She glanced at herself in the hallway mirror and held her hands above the butts of the two weapons as if she was a cowboy. 

Back to work, she didn't have much time. She carefully took his ID card out of the leather case. Then, from her jacket pocket, she took a picture of herself cut to the right size, a laminate-it-yourself kit consisting of two pieces of clear plastic that stuck together, and a pair of scissors. Lining up her picture over Braxton's took only a moment. She put the laminating sheets of plastic over the whole thing, pressed it together, and put it back in the card. She decided to try and sneak this back through Customs. Her mother might find it amusing. 

Susana knew that the card would not stand up to serious examination, but she didn't think there would be a serious examination. The cop was expecting an FBI agent; he would get one. She glanced at herself in the mirror and brushed at her hair with her hands. She headed back to the elevator. 

Two floors up. Showtime. She knocked on the door and waited. A mammoth black man opened the door and eyed her carefully. 

"Detective Rodell?" she asked. He nodded. She flashed her ID. "Special Agent Tonia Braxton." 

He looked at her. "Oh. They said Tony on the radio." 

"Oh." She looked slightly embarassed. "Happens all the time. But you have a witness in there for me." 

"OK," he agreed and opened the door wide. Susana changed her plans quickly; this guy was just too damn big to go after with the Harpy. She couldn't be sure the first shot would take him down, and if not, then he would just pick her up and break her in two. No, although she didn't like it, she had no real choice other than to use the gun. 

Even so, the gun was untraceable to her anyway. And now was the time to strike. His back was turned as he headed into the apartment, clearing the way for her. She shifted her briefcase to her other hand and drew her weapon. A touch of her mother's morals rose up in her, protesting that it was hardly sporting to kill a man from behind who believed her to be an ally. She answered that spark by pointing out that it wasn't sporting to be captured, or killed, either. 

She put the gun up against the back of his head and pulled the trigger once. The muzzle was pressed into his skin and there was very little sound. Detective Rodell did not feel any real pain. One moment, he was thinking about the cute FBI agent who needed to interview Dover; the next moment, a 9mm slug penetrated the back of his skull. It was a hollow-point slug and when it contacted the soft material of his brain, it mushroomed. It tore apart Rodell's thoughts, dreams, and memories in a heartbeat. He was brain dead before he hit the floor. 

When he did, it made an awful thump. She saw a scared-looking older man looking at her. 

"What happened?" he asked. 

"Oh my God, he fell. Come help me with him," Susana ordered. 

"Should I call 911?" he asked querulously. 

"No. Get over here and help." 

When Thomas Dover did, she had to roll her eyes. Some people were so predictable. If she'd told him to shoot himself and save her the trouble, would he have? She could have done all this by phone maybe, just call each of them and ask them to kill themselves for her, please. 

But that wouldn't have been as much fun. He ran over and stared at the back of Rodell's head, which was bleeding. 

"He's bleeding," bleated Dover. 

"So are you," Susana said, and pistol-whipped him with the barrel of the 9mm. She felt his nose break. It was very satisfying. Idly, she wondered if her mother or her father had ever pistol-whipped anyone. She decided her mom probably had, and turned her attentions back to her current victim. 

Dover had rolled over on his side, unbelieving. Susana stood up and walked over to him. Her maroon eyes reflected the light in red points down at him. A beautiful, evil young goddess of death. 

"You're the last of the scribblers," she said tonelessly. "The last of the ones who told those lies about my papa." 

"What lies? What are you talking about?" His tone was nasal and thick with blood. 

"I'm Susana Lecter," she explained. "Smithfield, Jameson and you told lies about my papa. They paid the price. Now it's your turn." 

Dover lay on the floor, stunned. His nose was a bright flare of fire and pain. But the girl's revelation stunned him more. 

"No, wait," he said. "I knew your mom." 

Susana chuckled. She felt in a rather Lecter-ish mood, and decided that Dover's end would be more as her father would have done. "My mother?" 

"Yes," rasped Dover. "If your dad is Hannibal Lecter, your mom must be Clarice Starling." 

Susana considered and lowered the gun. Dover saw he had her interest and plunged on. 

"I grew up in West Virginia," he said. "I was friend with your mom when we were kids." 

"Maybe you've done some research," she challenged, "but it won't save you." 

"It's true!" He gagged. "Your grandpa was John Starling. He was a night marshal." 

"Right so far." 

Thomas Dover wasn't a stupid man, and he knew that Detective Polowski was returning with pizza, any minute now. If he could only keep this young monster busy long enough. 

"They had a white house. On Jackson street. He used to pick up Sno Balls for her." 

Susana decided that he wasn't lying. She still planned to kill him, but she might let him live a few minutes longer. 

"Keep going," she said. Dover brightened. A knock came at the door. His rescuer was here. 

Unfortunately for Thomas Dover, Susana knew exactly who it was at the door. She hid her gun behind her back and threw the door open to reveal Detective Joe Polowski. He held a pizza box in his hands. From a 

"Hi," she said. "Tonia Braxton, FBI." 

He started to say hello, then saw the prone body of his partner. "What the hell?" 

Most cops learn early on to keep their gun hand free. Susana had learned pistolcraft from her mother, who had drilled this into her. Detective Polowski would serve as a reminder of why for future generations of Chicago police.. 

To his credit, he tried. He dropped the pizza box almost immediately and went for his gun. But the fastest gunslinger in the world could not outdraw a gun already out and aimed at him. Susana pumped a bullet into his gut. When he fell, she ran up to him and fired another bullet into his head. 

She hauled him into the apartment and closed and locked the door. Dover was curled up, whimpering, in a ball on the carpet. His nose was still bleeding and a dark pool was beginning to form on the carpet. Too bad, she thought. The carpet was decent. But it was not going to be saved now. Neither was he.

"Sorry you were so rudely interrupted. C'mon," she said, and got him up on his knees. She herded him into the kitchen. He cowered, expecting to die as Smithfield had. 

Susana had other plans. She opened up the cupboards below his sink and threw all the cleaning chemicals out with her foot. Then she pinned his wrist down, slapped a handcuff on it, and attached the other cuff to the drainpipe. 

"Now don't you move, and don't you make a sound. Or what I'll do will make your nose feel like a mother's kisses," she threatened. 

Dover whimpered something about not wanting to die. Susana decided he was sufficiently cowed and strode down his hallway to his bedroom. There, she took the sheets off the bed. She had a wonderful idea as a tribute to her father's work. Memphis. One of his finest works.

It was no real choice which cop was going up on the wall. Detective Rodell went about three hundred pounds. Detective Polowski was a hundred pounds lighter – no featherweight, but she could get him where she wanted him. Conveniently, there was a beam crossing the cathedral ceiling that would work to anchor him to.

She borrowed Dover's computer chair to move Rodell. She pondered where to place him for the most realism, but realized that there was no way she could pass for Rodell. Wrong gender, wrong race, and wrong body size. She decided that Rodell would go where Pembry actually had gone. 

Thank God, no one was in the hallway. Most tenants were at work. Opening the elevator doors when the elevator itself was not at her floor was not easy, but Susana managed it with the aid of a gun barrel. Rodell's body made a horrible thud when she dropped it down the shaft and it hit the car. 

She took a moment to admire her handiwork where she had affixed Detective Polowski with the bedsheet draped under him like the wings of a moth. Just as her father had done to a Memphis police officer so many years ago. But Dover himself did not fit into this scenario. It took a few minutes for her to set up his scenario. 

She checked on him and discovered he had only taken a roll of paper towels in an attempt to clean up the blood from his nose. She rolled him over on his back and cuffed his hands behind his back. Pulling him to his feet, she directed him over to the computer chair. She dropped him into it. He seemed to have lapsed into a narcotized funk of fear and pain. That was fine. Easier to manage that way.

In Dover's bedroom, she had discovered a fifty-foot length of rope. She didn't know what he used it for and frankly didn't want to know. But it came in awfully handy. While Dover had been cuffed to his plumbing, she had tied a noose in it and dragged it out onto Dover's balcony. 

"What are you doing?" he muttered as she rolled him towards the sliding glass door of the balcony. 

"Don't worry about it," she said smoothly. "It'll all be over in a minute or two." 

Out on the balcony, he stirred. There was a three-foot wall at the edge, designed to keep the unwary from falling over the balcony and splattering themselves all over the street below. 

"I'll tell my mama you said hello," she said sweetly. She grabbed the noose and dropped it over his head, tightening it with a quick jerk. 

His eyes snapped open at that. "What are you doing?" he cried. 

Susana grabbed the Harpy and snapped it out. A quick slash up Dover's body, and then she slipped around him. Her hands grabbed him at the upper arm and pulled him out of the chair. Then she kicked it away and threw Dover over the side. 

Thomas Dover plummeted a heartstopping distance. When the rope finally snapped taut, his neck broke with a audible crack and his bowels fell out. His viscera dripped vile fluids onto the sidewalk below. Horrified passersby stopped and stared. The body swayed slowly, bumping against the wall of the building.

On the balcony, Susana took only a moment to watch him hit the end of the rope. She was somewhat disappointed that he did not actually dance on air. Still, the effect of disembowelment was as impressive as her father had led her to believe. 

Escape was simple. Everyone was looking at the swaying body. It was a simple matter to get to the stairs. She took them two at a time and slipped into the gathering crowd outside. By the time the first units had pulled up to the building and the police went in to discover the remaining grisly surprise, Susana was in her rental car and on her way to the airport. 


	6. Ghosts and Randomness

__

Author's notes: 

Whoo-ee, these past few chapters have been nonstop action. So here's a little breather. (In other words, no one gets waxed in this chapter. But if you're one of Susana's more bloodthirsty fans, fear not. There's plenty more accounts to settle up, and I rather think you'll enjoy the plot twists that are upcoming.) 

Thanks to everyone who reads and reviews. More chapters coming shortly, unless I start feeling Lecter-ish myself and holding them hostage. Quid pro quo, Clarice. I write things, you read and review things. 

--

Back in Washington, Susana took a few days to relax and play tourist. Despite her more violent tendencies, she enjoyed the cultural activities a great deal. In that, she was very much her father's daughter. She visited the Smithsonian Institute for a few days. She had more fun than she expected at the National Zoo. And today, she was visiting the FBI. 

Susana thought it quite daring to brazenly walk into the heart of the forces that had been arrayed against her father and were seeking her out now. Besides, while the Chicago crimes were all front-page news, there seemed to be no connection to her. She had made sure to get the Chicago papers. So far, there was nothing indicating the police had any evidence on her. She expected as much. She had made sure to avoid leaving fingerprints at all three scenes. 

Even so, she wasn't naïve enough to waltz into FBI headquarters with a visitor's badge clipped to her lapel. No, Susana had a far better idea. The concierge had been most helpful in finding a beauty salon for her where she could get her hair done. She brought the beautician a photograph and told her she wanted her hair cut to resemble that. She had colored it too, taking it a few shades lighter.

Now she sat at the desk in her hotel room with a variety of cosmetics spread out before her. The photograph was prominent where she had taped it to the mirror. The picture showed a young woman much like her. The woman in the photograph had a solemn, composed expression. Her hair was a few shades lighter than Susana's natural color. It was Clarice Starling's college graduation picture. 

The first step was to insert a set of colored contact lenses. Susana had twenty-twenty vision, but the contact lenses only changed the color of her eyes to blue. She carefully put them in, blinked, and then stared at her reflection in the mirror. In place of her own maroon eyes, courtesy of her father, a pair of blue eyes stared back at her. 

Susana had a strong resemblance to her mother already. She possessed the same high cheekbones and delicate features. With a bit of makeup, she was able to enhance this resemblance. She didn't put on a lot of it, as her mother had rarely indulged in cosmetics during her career with the FBI. She worked carefully, comparing her reflection to the photograph. Occasionally she rubbed her face with a towel and started again. 

Finally, she was satisfied. Her reflection in the mirror was a near-perfect duplicate of the photograph. Susana Alvarez Lecter rose and put on a simple, dark suit. It was of much more expensive cut than anything her mother had worn at her age, but her father had taught her about dressing well and his lessons had stayed with her. 

She caught a cab to FBI headquarters and walked up the ramp into the building. An armed guard looked up at her as she came in. 

"Your name?" 

"Susana Alvarez," Susana said. Her surname was so common that tying it to her would be almost impossible in any case. 

"Purpose of your visit?" 

She smiled. "Um, actually, I read in a guidebook that you could get tours of the FBI." 

"There's one starting in half an hour, ma'am," the guard said. His tone was bored and uninterested. "Your ID, please?" 

Susana gave him her passport. He glanced at it and handed it back to her. "Argentina, huh?" 

"Yes," she said. 

"Welcome to America." 

"Thank you," Susana said. He handed her a visitor's badge. "You can wait over there, if you like. Please keep the badge on at all times and stay with your tour group." 

Susana thanked him very much and sat down to wait. She watched people going to and fro. Her eyes swept across the massive building, and for a moment she wondered it must have been like for her mother, working in this vast labyrinth. 

A half-hour later, a perky blond woman came around to round up the visitors. Susana went along peaceably and followed along. She prepared to be bored by presentations about J. Edgar Hoover and the history of the FBI. She was not disappointed. She wondered what would happen if she asked the tour guide if it was true that Hoover had been a _maricòn_, and decided not to. This wasn't the place to stick out.

…

Section Chief Ardelia Mapp was stressed out. In the years since she had come to head up Behavioral Sciences, she had never had one of her agents get killed. Field agents got killed, and she had seen that. But never before had one of her profilers been killed. But now one had. 

It had begun simply enough in Chicago, after two strange murders back-to-back of National Tattler writers. Tony Braxton had gone out to Chicago to interview another employee, the one Chicago PD believed to be next. Then, a bloodbath had taken place. 

Agent Braxton had been discovered in a tenth-floor hall closet. Apparently, the killer had known he was coming. Mapp was heartbroken when she discovered he had died. But in the apartment where Thomas Dover had been found – she still shuddered. 

Two separate Lecter murders had been duplicated there. The police officers assigned to Dover had been used to re-enact Lecter's escape from Memphis. One had been found tied up with a sheet under him to suggest wings to a beam. The other had his face cut off and had been dumped on top of the elevator car. Thomas Dover himself had been killed in a duplicate of the Pazzi murder in Florence, Italy. 

She had taken over the investigation named LECCOPY herself. Braxton's initial profile had suggested an UNSUB who saw themselves as Lecter's protector or guardian. It was quite difficult to manage this case and run her department at the same time – the death of Braxton weighed heavy on her mind. 

She'd driven in to FBI headquarters from Quantico for a meeting. Chicago PD had teleconferenced in. They were hot for a suspect, and Ardelia didn't blame them. But she wanted to wait, to build her profile and catch her killer dead-bang. Despite the grief, over thirty years of police work had taught Ardelia that anger was a bad thing for cops. It clouded their minds and prevented them from doing their jobs. Police work done by angry cops was often shoddy police work. Shoddy police work set killers free.

Chicago felt they had a cop-killer on their hands. Ardelia didn't agree. She believed that the UNSUB killed police officers only as a means to an end. The end had been the murders of Smithfield, Jameson, and Dover. All three were Tattler employees; all three had written articles blaming Hannibal Lecter for various murders. 

As she left her meeting, she shook her head. Agent Witt, one of her long-time profilers, accompanied her to the elevator. 

"I can't believe this," she muttered. 

"Can't believe what?" he asked. "We need some time, chief. That's all. We'll get the bastard." 

"Whoever they are, they're good," she warned. "No fingerprints, no hair, no nothing. Must be strong, too – Rodell weighed two hundred pounds." 

"You think it might be Lecter himself?" 

Ardelia shook her head. "No way. Even if Lecter's still alive, I doubt a man his age could stick a two-hundred-pound man on the wall and drop a three-hundred-pound one down an elevator shaft." 

"So it's a copycat." 

"Not quite. The Jameson murder didn't match up to any Lecter murder." 

"Any _known_ Lecter murder," Witt pointed out. 

The elevator binged open on the ground floor. Mapp stepped out. 

…

"This is the Hall of the Fallen," the perky tour guide said. "Begun in 2008, we have here the photographs of all FBI agents who have fallen in the line of duty since the founding of the Bureau. These brave law enforcement agents are remembered here." Her face cast down in an expression of practiced grief. The tourists shuffled and felt the token wave of guilt that was exactly what they were supposed to feel. 

Susana didn't. She scanned the wall of 8x10 pictures to see if her mother's might be on it. She located the picture of a man named John Brigham. She studied it momentarily, wondering what was so special about the man. Her mother had told her of him when she was young. Clarice missed him a great deal, even still. He had been so wrongly wasted. Here, on this wall, he was just another dead hero. Susana wondered why her mother still got teary when his name came up. 

To her surprise, her mother's picture was here. Printed under it was her name, her dates of service, and the words "MISSING 1998, PRESUMED DEAD". Susana pondered on that for a moment, as the date was six years before her own birth. She was rather glad the presumption of the FBI was in error. Her mother was not smiling in the picture. She looked serious, tired, and pale. Susana supposed that the picture must have been taken shortly before her mother left the country with her father, when she was disenchanted and disheartened with the FBI. Wandering the halls as her mother's doppelganger, she had seen no trace of her mother save this; no psychic scrap of the years her mother had spent in this agency were here for her to pick up on. All there was were offices and computers and people looking for her father and herself. 

A black woman and white man passed by. The black woman glanced in and stared at the grid of pictures. Her face was a study in tenderness, nostalgia, and grief. Susana paid them no attention, playing the role of the tourist. The tour guide called her charges to follow her into another room, and Susana complied. She turned her head and glanced at the pair in the hall, then followed her guide dutifully. She didn't see the black woman turn pale and gasp. 

…

As Ardelia and Witt continued to discuss the LECCOPY case, they passed by the Hall of the Fallen. She glanced in because it was her habit to do so. When the Hall had been formed, she had argued for Clarice, then ten years missing, to be included. More to satisfy her than anything else, the agents in charge of the Hall had agreed, and Clarice's picture went up with the others. Whenever Mapp passed it, she glanced in to pay her friend a small, silent respect. 

But this time…Clarice was in there. 

Right under Clarice's picture was Clarice in the flesh. A young Clarice, perhaps when they had been in the Academy together. She wore a simple, attractive suit and pumps. Her hair was in the same style it had been when she and Ardelia had reviewed the Buffalo Bill case file. The night that she and Clarice had worked out Dr. Lecter's last clue.

"Clarice?" she said, still unbelieving. She felt time warping in on her, as if hoping that Clarice would turn and say _What does this guy do? He covets._

Clarice turned. Ardelia's heart did cartwheels in her chest. Clarice's blue eyes focused on Ardelia, raked across her, and evidenced no recognition. Then she followed the tour guide on. 

Ardelia gasped. Her face lost color. Ardelia was black, and did not turn pale in the manner of her Caucasian co-workers. Instead, all the color fell out of her face, leaving it a grayish color similar to cigarette ash. It served to signal distress as easily as turning pale did.

Ardelia's heart slowed as it dawned on her. Tour guide. Just some tourist here from East Lompoc, Idaho. Not Clarice. Couldn't be Clarice. Yet the resemblance was astonishing. She could have sworn young Clarice had stepped through a tesseract from 1990 to 2025. 

Witt had seen her distress. "Something wrong, chief? You look like you just saw a ghost." 

"Thought I had," Ardelia responded. 

Witt's look became a bit more concerned. "You sure you're OK, boss?" 

"Yeah," she said, and gave him an empty smile. "It's just…oh heck. One of the tourists in that tour group they run just looked like someone." 

"Starling?" 

"How'd you know?" 

Witt grinned. "That's what you pay me for, isn't it?" 

"Could've been her twin," Ardelia averred. "That was just…really random." 

Words from the past echoed in her mind as those words escaped her lips. 

A much younger version of herself: _Doesn't this random pattern seem desperately random? _

Her roommate and best friend, Clarice Starling: _In other words, not random at all. _

For some reason, Ardelia Mapp was convinced that her sighting of the ghost Clarice was not random at all. 

Time would prove her right, too.

__


	7. In the company of women

Susana had taken a few days to play tourist for her own reasons. Part of it was simply to enjoy herself. And part of it was to decide what to do about Margot Verger. The first three accounts Susana had settled were pure and simple, black and white. Margot was a bit more gray. 

Margot Verger had killed her brother and blamed Hannibal Lecter for the crime. A warrant for his arrest still existed, as there was no statute of limitations for murder. That was simply wrong. The actual murderess had gone unpunished and unsuspected. While her father had spent eight years in a filthy cage for his doings, Margot Verger had enjoyed the lifestyle of a well-to-do heiress for twenty-five years. She had enjoyed a relationship with her lover Judy that had never known trying to touch between prison bars. She had a son, a nephew actually, the result of sperm donated from her brother and implanted into her lover. That son was a few years older than Susana. He, too, had never known the truth. 

All that implied that Margot ought to be simply killed, and that was what Susana wanted to do. But she also knew from her father that he had urged her to kill her brother, first as her psychiatrist and years later as a captive at Muskrat Farm. He had volunteered to claim responsibility for the murder and knowingly left a message on the Verger answering machine claiming to have killed Mason. One more murder charge meant nothing to Hannibal Lecter.

So Susana was left with a dilemma her mother might have been able to help her with. On the one hand, Margot Verger enjoyed something that was not hers to have and had left her papa to take the blame for her crime. On the other hand, he had clearly wanted her to, and actively helped her. Susana's desire to set the record straight strained neatly against the clear desires and wishes of her father. 

In any other case, Susana would have done what she wished to, the desires of others be damned.. But Susana's feelings towards her father mirrored those of Clarice Starling's feelings toward hers. In that, she was not so terribly different from many other women. Her papa was the sine qua non of authority. She looked upon him with love and respect. Papa could not be argued with or questioned. The word of Dr. Alonso Alvarez, aka Dr. Hannibal Lecter, had always been the final word in the _casa Alvarez_. The fact that he had died had only strengthened that power. 

It was something her mother had told her about that finally broke the impasse. Clarice Starling remembered a great deal of her psychotherapy with Lecter in his home on the shore, including her tumultuous meeting with the remains of her father. Starling had tried to share this with her rare daughter shortly after Lecter's death. It was not until now that Susana recalled it. 

"And then he put his hands on my head, and said, '_What you need of your father is here, in your head, and subject to your judgment, not his.'_" 

"Subject to my judgment, not his," Susana repeated in her hotel room. The phrase spoke to her and she made it her own. From her suitcase she took a framed photograph of her father – with his Alonso Alvarez face, the one that had stared into her crib at night -- and addressed her father directly for the first time since she had watched him lowered into the ground at Buenos Aires's best graveyard. 

"I'm sorry, papa, but I'm doing this one my way, not yours," she said to the picture. "Margot Verger will pay." 

She had already done her research on Margot, some via the Internet and some via a private investigator in the U.S. who took cash and kept his mouth firmly closed. She knew that after more than a quarter-century together, Judy and Margot had recently broken up. They still lived at Muskrat Farm, but in separate rooms. And their son, of course, owned the entire thing, lock, stock and barrel. 

Her file on Margot told her where she could be found on Saturday nights. Susana opened her suitcase and scowled at the outfit she had chosen to use as camouflage. A pair of combat boots. Levi's 501 jeans, still unchanged after more than a century. A flannel shirt. A motorcycle jacket. According to the investigator Susana had used, this was common at the bars Margot frequented, but Susana still hated the outfit. He had sworn that Margot was attracted to young women dressed this way. She put it on and eyed herself in the mirror. She wasn't pleased. 

Susana was the only daughter of two parents who were older and wealthier than most first parents. Like many other women in that situation, her girlhood had been one of fancy dresses, patent-leather shoes, and learning ladylike behavior. Dr. Lecter had found it amusing to dress his young daughter in the finest clothing available. Ever since Susana had remembered, wearing dresses had been a way to win his coveted approval. Clarice Starling, for her part, indulged her husband, for she, too, liked seeing her daughter in dresses and frills. It was a way for her to shield her daughter from another world: a world of arrests and gang members and gunfights. 

So Susana had been hopelessly addicted to girly stuff at an early age. Other than a brief adolescent rebellion period, she had gotten her hair and nails done at the best salons in Buenos Aires. Her father's tastes had rubbed off heavily on her. She preferred wearing skirts to pants and did so whenever she could. She did not leave the house without proper makeup and accessories. 

But this…ick. She thought of Pedro, the gardener back at her estate. In an outfit like this, she thought she should grab a trowel and start digging along with him. Or perhaps show up for a factory job. 

If this attracted Margot Verger, she thought, then she deserved to die for lack of taste alone. At the minimum, she could have chosen young women with Manolo Blahniks on their feet and Versace on their bodies. That, at least, was attractive. 

At least she would find it easy to move around, which was good. Although age had taken away Margot Verger's top form, she was still a bodybuilder and a very strong woman. Physically, she might match or supplant Susana herself.But Susana had other advantages over her: speed, flexibility, killer instinct, and the Harpy clipped to her pocket. 

Her report from the investigator said that Margot preferred women with short hair, but Susana was not willing to go there. She tied her hair back and decided that would have to do. Hopefully, she would be able to wangle an invitation to Muskrat Farm tonight, but if the hair cost her that, she'd simply kill Margot in the bar and be done with it. 

Susana gave her reflection a final glare in the mirror and caught a cab to the bar that she had been told Margot frequented on weekends. The cabbie gave her a look but said nothing. She arrived at Dupont Circle, where several gay bars were located. Susana was surprised at how small it seemed. The club district in Buenos Aires was much bigger. Though, she allowed, she had never been to the gay district. 

Even the bouncer was a woman. She towered over Susana and demanded her ID. Susana dutifully gave the bouncer her passport. The bouncer looked at it and her brow wrinkled in confusion. 

"What's this?" 

"My _pasaporte_," Susana answered. She did not normally speak English with an accent. Her normal English sounded much like her father's had. She could also mimic her mother's West Virginia accent with startling fidelity, and she could also sound like a typical Argentinian when it suited her. It suited her to do so now. People would remember the accent and forget the person who spoke with it.

"You're not from here, huh?" 

"No. First time in America." 

"It's a ten-dollar cover charge. Have a good time." The bouncer returned her passport and stamped her hand. Susana paid and entered the bar. It was crowded with women. Music heavy with electric guitar pierced the air. The bar was smoky and dark. Several women crowded around a pool table. 

Most of them were dressed similarly to her. A few sported ties and jackets. There was one tall woman dressed very femininely who had a crowd of others around her, all laughing. It wasn't until Susana drew closer and heard the tall woman speaking that she realized the tall woman was a man. She almost had to laugh. The only person dressed like a woman in the whole place was a man.

She saw Margot Verger standing by the bar. The years had been relatively kind to her: she still sported a massively muscled frame. Her once-blond hair had gone completely gray. But her arms and chest were still thick with muscle. She had some walnuts in her hands and was cracking them for the benefit of the women around her. 

Susana nestled in next to her, facing the bar, as if intending to get a drink. She doubted this place had much of a wine list. Most of the women around her were drinking beer, she noted with distaste. Owing to her father's upper-class tastes, Susana loathed and despised beer. It was a weak and poor-tasting brew for the masses. 

Margot's eyes fell upon her. 

"Hey," she said. "Haven't seen you around before." 

_You won't again_, Susana thought. Outwardly, she glanced at Margot, looked her up and down, and gave her a quick smile. 

"I'm not from here," she said with an accent. 

Margot nodded. "Where are you from, then?" 

"Argentina," Susana answered truthfully, pronouncing it _Ar-hen-teen-a. _"B.A." 

Margot looked blank. 

"Buenos Aires," Susana supplied. 

"Oh, wow." Margot stuck out her hand. "I'm Margot." 

"Susana," she said, volunteering her own name. 

"First time in America?" 

Susana nodded.

"That's great. It's really nice here. You want a beer?" 

Although Susana ranked beer as only slightly more preferable to drink than urine, she agreed. To her credit, Margot chose an imported beer which was better than most. 

"Can I ask you a question?" Margot asked, looking directly into Susana's eyes. 

The eyes, Susana remembered. Uh-oh. Margot had been a patient of her father, and had remembered the eyes. "Sure," she said, sliding one hand surruptitiously towards the Harpy. She didn't want it to be this way. She wanted Margot to have the chance to understand what she was being punished for. But if she had to do a quick slash-and-run, she would. 

She was pleasantly surprised. "Well, I was just wondering how come you don't look Hispanic if you're from Argentina." 

Aha. Susana gave her a slightly cold glance, as if offended. "You mean why don't I look _indio? _There are all kinds in Argentina, just like here. We have _blancos _and _indios _and _negros_ just like you." Her tone was frosty. 

Margot raised her hands. "Sorry. I didn't mean anything. Really." 

Margot continued to flirt with her. Susana answered back with some coyness, just enough to keep Margot interested. When you got right down to it, it wasn't terribly different from dealing with the hot-blooded Argentinian boys. She was glad she had chosen to use the accent. It was bait which Margot had helplessly swallowed. 

Susana was not troubled by the fact that Margot was a lesbian. She wasn't interested in it herself, but that aspect of her prey's personality meant little to her. A fox intending to kill a chicken does not care what color its tailfeathers are. She did think it slightly _declassè_ that Margot favored women younger than her own son. _Now now,_ her father spoke up in her head, _Margot has recently broken up with her partner, with whom she has been since before you were born. Is that really any different than a divorced middle-aged father who goes out and gets a sports car and an earring? _

The image of her father rose up in her mind, wearing an earring and tooling around Buenos Aires in a sports car with an eighteen-year-old in a miniskirt rose up in her mind and she couldn't help but giggle. She glanced at her beer and tried to remember how many she'd had. Margot tilted her head and looked at her. 

"You OK?" 

"Yeah," Susana said. "I think I'd better quit here, though. I'm starting to feel giddy."

"Is that a bad thing?" Margot grinned. 

Susana put down her beer and brought her palms together. She raised her eyes to the ceiling like a virtuous schoolgirl, even though she was completely without religion. "Someone might come and try and impede my virtue," she said. 

"Are you virtuous?" 

"_Muy virtuosa."_ Susana said sarcastically. 

"Tell you what," Margot said. "Come on with me back to my place. I'll help you guard against anyone who might try to impede your virtue." 

The line was horribly hokey, but Susana accepted the offer. Margot walked her out to her car. Susana gave her credit for the car – it was a black Porsche 930, rare and fast. It smelled of leather and class. Margot drove fast and well. The Porsche rocketed up the highway like a black buzz bomb. Susana decided that she would take this car back from the farm after she killed Margot. She liked the car's handling. 

Muskrat Farm was impressive, Susana decided. She oohed and aahed over the size of the house as if she was a peasant for Margot's sake. The house she had grown up in was larger, but Muskrat Farm had it beat for acreage. That was good. Less noise. 

In the house, Margot offered her a drink. Susana asked for wine. Margot's tastes were not all bad, she decided. The wine was a French red, very good. 

"You've got really big muscles," she complimented Margot. "Are you a bodybuilder?" She made sure to say _beeg _and _bodybeelder_. Margot grinned. 

"Yeah," she said. "Haven't been into it as much as I used to be, but hey, I'm not your age anymore." 

"Where do you lift?" 

"Right here," Margot said proudly. "I have a whole gym in the other wing." 

"Really?" Susana's eyes widened as if she'd never heard of the idea. "I thought you had horses here." 

"We do," Margot said. "You like horses?" 

"Yes," said Susana. Dr. Lecter had deemed equestrian sport a fitting pastime for his daughter, and she had spent a fair amount of her childhood in the saddle. "I rode when I was a kid." 

"English or Western?" 

"English," Susana said, looking offended. "Western is for _gauchos_." 

"What kind of saddle did you have?" Margot challenged. 

"A Prix des Nations." 

Margot nodded. "Good saddle," she said calmly. 

"So what's in your gym?" 

"Oh, the usual…Nautilus machines, free weights…a full shower room…," Margot grinned. 

"Can I see it?" 

"Sure." She took Susana through the halls to her gym. The lights shone off the shiny steel of Margot's exercise rig. Susana nodded respectfully at it. 

"You lift?" 

Susana giggled, blushed, and toed the ground with her boot. "No," she said shyly. 

Margot explained a few of the different machines. Susana feigned interest. She swallowed a bit when Margot indicated the shower room with four jets. 

"Want to try that?" Margot challenged. _How subtle_, Susana thought.

"Um. You first," Susana said. 

Margot chuckled. Without any inhibitions, she stripped off her clothing and entered the shower room. Susana heard the screech of two showers turning on. 

"You gotta try this," Margot yelled over the sound of the shower. "Turn two on at once. A friend of mine showed me, it's great." 

Now Susana had to think. She wasn't afraid of entering the shower room naked with Margot there. What she did have to think about was how to get the Harpy in with her. It is exceedingly difficult to conceal a weapon when you are naked. She tried to fasten the Harpy to her hair, which did not work. She had no tape with her and couldn't clip the Harpy to anything because she had nothing to clip it to. 

"You dead out there or something?" Margot asked. A fair amount of steam billowed from the shower room. 

"_Momento_," Susana yelled back. She spied a rowing machine and inspiration struck. The rowing machine had a footrest and a nylon strap so that the rower could strap their feet to the footrest. It took only a moment to detach the strap. She was able to hide it in her hair. Not good for the long term, but it would work. She also took a long steel pin from one of the weight machines and concealed it in her hand as best she could. 

She stripped quickly and entered the shower, her left hand concealing the steel pin. Margot glanced at her appreciatively. Now Susana did feel uncomfortable. 

"Woah," Margot's gaze dropped down. 

Susana flushed red with real embarrassment for the first time as she realized what Margot was talking about. "Oh. I wax." 

"Thought that was only in Brazil." 

"No," she said shortly. "We do it in Argentina too." 

Margot opened her arms. "Well come here, cutie-pie." 

Susana shook her head and twirled her right index finger in a circular motion. "No. You turn around." 

Margot laughed. "You shy?" 

"Yeah, kinda," Susana acknowledged. When Margot complied, she slipped the strap from behind her hair and closed the plastic buckle. She slipped the strap over Margot's head, jammed the pin in between the strap and Margot's neck, and jumped on her back. She grabbed the pin and twisted it, forming a neat garrotte. 

"What the hell—" Margot managed. She tried to throw Susana off, but could not. Susana knew very well that if Margot threw her off, she was finished, so she hung on with the tenacity of the devil. In a few minutes, Margot collapsed to her knees, feebly trying to get a finger between the strap and her neck. Then she went completely limp and collapsed to the tiled floor of the shower room. 

Susana turned off the showers and checked Margot. She was still breathing. That was good. Margot Verger would know why she was being executed. She got her fingers under Margot's arms and hauled her out into the weight room. 

"You have to watch out for us Latin women," she told Margot's unconscious form. "That temper will get you every time." 

Then she began to prepare what she needed to do to settle Margot Verger's account. 


	8. Payments and gifts

Margot Verger regained consciousness slowly. Even before her eyes fluttered open, she knew she was in her gym. But details came slowly to her foggy brain. She had been out to the bar, where she went most weekends since Judy and her had broken up. She'd picked up someone – some cute Argentinian girl – and brought her back. And then what? 

Her eyes fluttered open. She was lying on her own weight bench, with a barbell resting on it set to two hundred pounds. But she wasn't going to be lifting anything. Her arms were bound behind her back, under the bench. She tested her bonds and found them immovable. She looked down her body and found her legs were neatly bound to the bench as well. What the hell was going on? 

She heard a sound and looked over. The girl she had picked up was looking at herself in the mirror, brushing her hair and looking annoyed. She wore only the flannel shirt. When she heard Margot stir, she looked around. 

"Look, kid, I don't know what you want, but take it and get out," Margot said. 

"I don't think so," Susana answered. She put her hairbrush back in her purse and pulled on her jeans. "What I want is going to take a while." 

"Look. If I scream, the police will be here in five minutes. There are no drugs here, nothing like that. Let me go and I'll let you go, kid. You don't know what you're in for." 

There was a sharp _click_ and a knife appeared in Susana's hand. Margot wisely shut up. 

"Okey dokey," Susana said breezily. "First off: drugs. Number one, don't tell me there aren't enough steroids here to make sure the Miami Dolphins win the next four Super Bowls. But that's okay, because number two, I don't want drugs anyway. Or money. Got plenty of it myself." 

Her accent was gone, and somehow that more than anything else told Margot she was in deep shit. 

"What I _am_ here for is revenge. For my papa." 

"Your papa?" Margot looked confused. "Listen, I don't know what you're talking about . I have, like, nothing to do with men. Just not my thing." 

"You do with my papa," Susana argued. "Or did. Maybe you forgot." She leaned in close to the bound Margot. "Look into these eyes and tell me you've never seen them before." 

As soon as Susana leaned in enough for Margot to see her maroon eyes, it hit her like a ton of bricks. In the bar, it had been too dark and smoky. And oh yes, all right, Margot would admit it, she wasn't looking at the younger woman's eyes. Maroon eyes. Maroon eyes she had seen once before…

Margot turned pale. "Oh my god…," 

"You got it!" Susana seemed perversely pleased. "I'm Susana Lecter. And I'm here to make you pay up. It's been a long time, but your life will do nicely." 

That last name convinced Margot she was not only in deep shit, but in a sea of it and sinking fast. Being tied down alone with a knife-wielding psycho was bad. If that knife-wielding psycho was Hannibal Lecter's daughter, that was worse. Much worse. She'd never pretended to know what made Dr. Lecter tick and had no idea what might mollify his daughter. But she had to find out fast. 

"What did your dad tell you about me?" 

"You killed your brother and blamed him for it," Susana answered obligingly. She knew that Margot would try telling her that it was not so simple. This would be fun.

"Listen, Susana, please. Listen to me. I admit I blamed your father…for Mason. But he _told_ me to do it. He told me when I was very young, and he told me when…well, when I was an adult." 

"When Mason's goons kidnapped him and meant to feed him to the pigs," Susana agreed. "I know." 

"Then hear me out. Please. I had nothing to do with that. Mason did it all. Your father volunteered. He told me if I did it he would take the rap. He agreed to do it, Susana. He _wanted_ me to do it. He said 'What's one more murder charge to me'? Those were his words, not mine. He called here voluntarily and left a phone message claiming responsibility." Margot was sweating now in her bonds. 

"My papa spent eight years in a cage. Have you ever been in a cage, Margot? Did you ever try to touch your partner…what's her name, Judy? Did you ever try to touch her through cage bars? Do you know what it's like to touch only the finger of the one you love and have to content yourself with that as a treasured memory?" A look of rage crossed Susana's pretty face, turning it into the face of a harpy. For a moment it seemed that her eyes glowed red with her fury. 

Margot's eyes widened when she heard Judy's name. But she dared not lose her temper, not with being tied down and a look like that on her captor's face. "No. I admit that. Susana, listen. I know you're mad. But we can work it out, right?" 

"No," Susana said. "Nothing can make up for blaming my papa for your crime. It's been almost thirty years. Thirty years _my _papa was accused of _your _crime." 

"I bet you love your dad a lot. He's a…great guy. He wouldn't want you to do this." 

"He _was_ a great _man_," Susana replied, "and I did love him a lot." Her tone of voice made Dr. Lecter's current status abundantly clear.

That was good, Margot thought. It had to be. Her life depended on convincing this small monster that her father wouldn't want her to kill her. She swallowed and wet her lips. Her tongue was dry with fear. 

"Is he…did he pass away? I'm sorry. I didn't know. Your dad helped me a lot. When I was a kid, and then later. I had a lot of respect for him, and he wouldn't want you to do this." 

"No," Susana agreed, "probably not." 

"Look. I…I understand. Really. I do. I'll make you a deal, Susana. Let me go, and I'll forget this whole thing ever happened. No cops, no nothing. We can work it out ourselves." 

"You don't think I'm dumb enough to cut you loose, do you?" Susana queried. 

Margot's pulse raced. Her heartbeat roared in her ears. Sweat trickled down her body. "If you feel better keeping me tied down, fine. Take the car, if you like. Just leave. I'll wait half an hour, then I'll start yelling for help. Hell, you can make it to the airport and be anywhere you want in half an hour. Money? You want money? I've got twenty thousand in a wall safe. It's in my bedroom behind a painting. Twenty thousand cold hard cash, Susana." 

"You're not buying your way out of this," Susana threatened. "I am _not _some politician." 

"No, no. But you'll need money." 

"I've got money," Susana said. 

"Take it as a token of my esteem. Donate it, if you want." 

"I have probably about as much money as you do," Susana said evenly, "considering your kid is the one who really owns this place." 

"What? Oh, yes. Michael. Have you ever met my son?" Margot smiled spastically. Maybe Susana had given her a back door into convincing her to spare her life. 

"No. I told you. First time in America. And he's not your son, really. He's your nephew." Susana chuckled. "That must be kind of messed up, I guess." 

"I guess," Margot allowed. "Look, who's your mother? Starling? Gotta be, you look like her. Think about how Starling would feel if you got killed. That's how Michael will feel. And Judy, even though we broke up." 

Susana's mouth twitched. Margot grinned. She was getting through. 

"Look, your mom was FBI. She wouldn't want you to kill me. She was for law and order." 

"I think the last time I ever did what my mother wanted me to do was when I was, oh, maybe six." 

Wrong tactic. Okay. Stick with Papa. Dr. Lecter was probably the only one who'd had any kind of control over his daughter anyway. It seemed just the sort of thing he would do, too. Had he spent all this time building the kid into some kind of assassin just for this? 

"Your dad wouldn't want you to kill me," she said quickly. "He volunteered, Susana. He wanted me to. He invited me to. I swear to you he volunteered. On my brother's grave I swear it." 

Susana walked over to her with a curious look on her face. She was pondering something. 

"Interesting choice," she said curtly, and folded the Harpy and put it away. Margot sobbed with relief. 

"OK, Susana, now look. We don't have to be friends, we don't have to hug, but you know your dad wouldn't want you to stab me." 

Susana looked askance at her. "Stab you? Oh, no. I wasn't going to stab you. I had something else entirely in mind." 

Margot stared at her for some moments before giving in to her curiousity. "What?" 

"This," Susana said promptly, and grabbed the barbell. With some effort, she lowered it down onto Margot's chest. Quickly, she secured it to the rest with two ropes so that Margot couldn't roll it off her. 

"Susana," she heaved. 

Susana hoisted another fifty-pound weight and put it on one end of the barbell. As she hunted for another to match, she explained. 

"You keep saying my papa wouldn't want me to kill you," she said. "And you know what? You're right. He wouldn't." 

She found the weight and attached it to the other side of the barbell. The weight dug into Margot's chest. It was agonizing against her ribs. Margot fought to pull air into her lungs. 

"But my papa is dead. Dead and gone. I'm settling up his accounts, but I do have to let him go." She found another set of weights and affixed them with a metal _clink_.

"My papa's wishes are not the driving factor here," she explained. "I do this in his name, but what I need of him is here." She tapped the side of her head. "And it is subject to my judgment. Not his. And I say that you should pay." She attached a third set of weights. 

Margot struggled to heave in air. Her heart began to protest the four hundred pound weight lying across it in her chest. Bright lights began to sparkle in her vision. 

"Susana," she gasped. "Please, in the name of God,…" she trailed off. The bright sparkles expanded into a bright light that shone so brightly she could not see the monster's face. Then, suddenly, it turned to darkness. Her last breath exhaled slowly from her tortured lungs. 

"In the name of God," Susana snorted disdainfully. "Really. You went to see my papa and he didn't teach you any better?" 

She gathered up her things and grabbed the towel she had used to dry herself. She put on her boots and shrugged into her jacket. She glanced over briefly at the naked dead woman. 

Five minutes later, the gate guard noticed Ms. Verger's Porsche pulling out of the exit gate at better than fifty. The engine screamed, in low gear. She took the turn hard but well, swerving out onto the access road and hauling ass for the highway. 

"Guess the girl of the night tonight didn't work out so well," he muttered. 

…

Ardelia Mapp arose in her duplex and glanced over at the clock. 6:00 AM. She heaved herself out of bed and padded into the kitchen. She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at her breakfast table. As she had almost every day for the past twenty-seven years, she cast a guilty look at the door connecting her half of the duplex to Starling's. 

She had never been able to sell the duplex, nor rent out Clarice's half. Legally, she could have – Clarice had no relatives, and had signed paperwork granting her half to Ardelia in the event of her deeath. No, her block was emotional. She was glad she'd kept the duplex – the mortgage was almost paid off, and housing was so incredibly expensive around D.C. 

She glanced down at the LECCOPY case file and pondered. Whoever the UNSUB was, she thought, they knew a great deal about modern criminology. No hair, no DNA, no fingerprints. No witnesses, either, and all the murders were planned so that the UNSUB could literally walk away and no one would be the wiser. Luck had also been on the UNSUB's side. If only one damn tenant had been in the hallway when Agent Braxton got hit…

_Don't go there, Ardelia,_ she thought. 

All they needed was a break. One lousy little break. Ardelia wasn't superstitious, but she believed that luck was like a fulcrum. First, luck would be on the side of the UNSUB. Then, it would shift over to Behavioral Sciences. And then, slowly but surely, luck would tip all the way to them and away from their prey, leaving the UNSUB exposed and caught. And then, of course, behind bars. 

She did not know a lot about who the UNSUB was. She knew a lot about _what_ the UNSUB was and wasn't. She started to review these again, just to see if anything came to place. For her review's sake, she decided to call the killer 'the Son of Lecter.' UNSUB was the official FBI term, but it drove her crazy to repeat it over and over. 

_OK, Ardelia. We know the Son of Lecter isn't a mental patient. Too much planning and forethought. Someone sane, someone not at all psychotic. No mental illness. _

We know the Son of Lecter is strong. Quick, too. Took out two armed police officers with just a knife. Even though they weren't expecting it – probably walked up to them and asked them for something. Caught 'em with their pants down. 

The Son of Lecter knows a lot about Lecter's crimes. More than your usual Internet junkie. 

The Son of Lecter is short. Knife wounds on the two cops were from a shorter person. Course, Lecter isn't gonna play for the NBA anytime soon. 

The Son of Lecter is cruel. Cruel the way Lecter was. Stood there and watched Jameson die, and watched Smithfield die too. Got the hell out of the Dover murder, but Dover's nose was broken premortem. Probably enjoyed it. 

The Son of Lecter knows guns, but prefers knives. The first two cops were killed with the knife. The second two cops were shot. I bet the bullets would match up to the first two cops' guns. That suggests that the Son of Lecter doesn't have guns of his own, but has some familiarity with them in the past. Hell, the shot on Polowski was pretty damn good – got him in the gut to take him down and then put a bullet in his head. So maybe some military service, maybe an MP or something like that. Actually, wait. A cop or a cop buff. I'd bet he's tried somewhere to become a cop and failed. But there's in intense knowledge of police procedure there. Must've had a scanner or something, picked up the radio discussion between the dispatcher and Rodell about Braxton. Or wait…

Ardelia suddenly realized that the Jameson cops had been missing their guns and badges. She opened the file and hunted for their morgue reports. She was willing to bet that one or both were missing their walkie-talkies. _That_ was how the Son of Lecter had known where Dover was and how to get at him.

The morgue reports on the two officers was printed in a very small font and the room was dark. Ardelia got up and walked over to the kitchen window. She opened the blinds to let in the Virginia morning light. What she saw froze her to the spot. Her coffee cup dropped from one limp hand. The morgue reports dropped from the other to flutter softly to the floor, where they soaked up coffee. 

Across the street was Clarice. 

She stood there, watching the house quietly. Looking _in. _Her eyes met Ardelia's and widened slightly. It was the young Clarice, the same one she had seen at the Hall of the Fallen. Somehow, time had not affected Clarice. She remained young while Ardelia was fifty-four. 

Her blue eyes were cool on Ardelia's brown ones. There was no real friendliness in them, as Ardelia might have expected. She wore jeans and a motorcycle jacket.. It wasn't quite Clarice's look, but that was definitely Clarice. Ardelia had no doubt. Tentatively, she raised a hand in greeting. Her heart almost stopped when Clarice raised a hand, but not to wave back. She smoothed her hair back instead.

She knew it couldn't be true. She knew that Clarice was away, probably with Lecter. The sick bastard had taken control of her mind. That was a lot of why she had gone into Behavioral Science: to understand the man who had taken control of her best friend. But whatever mental tricks Dr. Lecter might be able to do, he could not turn back the clock thirty years. 

But there, in front of her disbelieving eyes, was proof positive. Impossible as it might be, a young Clarice stood on the other side of the street, looking in her window at her. 

"Clarice?" Ardelia asked in a choked, shocked voice. 

Then the shock that had paralyzed her limbs let go, and she turned and sprinted for the door. Her fingers fumbled on the lock for a moment or two, and then she was in her driveway, sprinting across the yard. Somehow, in the pit of her stomach, she knew what would happen before it did. 

Ardelia Mapp stood in her yard, wearing only her bathrobe and slippers. She stared at the empty sidewalk across the street from her house. She turned right and left, and saw no cars she did not immediately recognize. 

_Ardelia,_ she thought, _you're losing it. _

She walked across the street to where the ghost Clarice had stood not a moment ago. She had to laugh ruefully. "It's all psychological," she murmured. "Duty. Braxton. The ghost Clarice is just a phantom I dreamed up to keep myself on track here. Or remind me of my duty, which is to catch the Son of Lecter." She raised a slippered foot, preparing to ruefully kick where the ghost had stood. Or not stood. 

And then she saw it and froze her foot in the air. 

On the sidewalk, barely visible, so common and germane she would never have noticed it, was a single long brown hair. 

Ardelia ran for her kitchen. When she returned, she had a clear plastic bag and tweezers. She grabbed up the hair and put it in the bag. 

"Cute, Clarice," she said. "Did you think I'd miss it?" 

She showered and dressed quickly and headed for Quantico. Once she was there, she checked in briefly down at Behavioral Sciences, and then ran for the lab. The lab tech there greeted her. 

"Hi, chief," she chirped. "Whatcha got for us today?" 

Ardelia held up the bag. "I need lab work done on this hair, " she said carefully. "DNA testing and general forensics package." 

The lab tech reached for the bag. "No problem. What case is it for?" 

Ardelia stopped. What was she supposed to say? _Well, you see, it's Clarice's hair. I saw Clarice in the Hall of the Fallen a few days ago and then she was across the street from my house. But it's a young Clarice. Somehow, Clarice has gone back to when we first met at the Academy.. And it's the only proof I have that I'm not seeing a ghost or losing my mind. So could you please test it for me? _

Ardelia sighed and then gritted her teeth. She didn't want to lie, but saw no choice.

"LECCOPY," she said.

…

Susana drove up the street, pondering. She decided she really liked the Porsche and would feel bad about abandoning it. It was a killer car. But it was impractical. The police would find Margot's body, if they hadn't already. There would be an APB out on the car. 

But before she got rid of it, she wanted to see her mother's old house. She knew the address. So this morning she had woken up early, put on her Clarice Starling face, and driven out to the house. It wasn't far away, just over the border in Virginia. 

She hadn't been impressed. It was just a small, plain duplex in an unremarkable neighborhood. The sort she imagined the servants living in. She stood on the sidewalk, looking in at the house. She couldn't see anything from the outside that made her think of her mother. Like the FBI, the house had no trace of its prior occupant. Susana wasn't entirely sure herself of what she was looking for by seeking out artifacts of her mother's life. She did know that she wasn't finding it. 

Then the blinds on one window had twitched open. A black woman had stared out at her. Susana glanced at the black woman, trying to place her. She had seen her before. Oh, wait. The FBI. The black woman staring into the Hall of the Fallen. Suddenly, it clicked. The black woman must be Ardelia Mapp. Good. Now Susana knew what she looked like.

Susana brushed at her hair with a hand. The black woman suddenly vanished from the window. Susana felt the presence of danger and ran up the street to where the Porsche was parked. She jumped in, revved the engine, and got out of there. She planned to park the car in long term parking at Dulles Airport, where it would sit for all eternity, or until the police found it. The police would assume that Margot's killer had fled. Susana's own departing flight was not for a few more days and was from Reagan National to Miami, so she was safe. 

Behind her, the door rattled. Ardelia Mapp sprinted out onto her lawn, but by then Susana was already turning onto the main drag and heading for the highway. In the still suburban air, a single hair knocked loose from Susana's head wafted down gently to the ground. 


	9. An old dog learns new tricks

Ardelia Mapp was sitting at her desk, going over crime-scene photos of the LECCOPY case. She studied it with some disdain. She was itching for the phone to ring. She fidgeted and toyed with the photos. She got herself coffee and checked her email. Her profilers noticed it, but said nothing. She had two other profilers also working LECCOPY, and occasionally one of them would drop in to ask a question or two. 

When the phone finally rang, she grabbed it on the first ring. 

"Mapp. Behavioral Sciences," she said importantly. 

"Hi, chief. We have your results in." 

"And?" 

"Well, a lot of us here don't believe it. Come on down and we'll show you." 

Ardelia bulleted down the hall to the labs. The young lab tech was there, grinning. 

"Some of us thought this must be some kind of a joke," she explained. 

"Well?" Ardelia asked impatiently. 

"OK. Let's start with the basics." Ardelia groaned. The lab techs were known for their dramatic flair. The lab tech – her name was Barbara, Ardelia remembered – took out a glass slide containing the hair she had brought it. 

"This is a long brown hair. The length and the fact that it's been dyed leads us to believe that it's a woman's hair. Whoever she is, she takes good care of her hair and gets her hair done someplace nice. It's healthy and thick. Probably a young woman. Also, the chemicals on the hair trace back to some pretty expensive hair-care products. The dye is a formula only available in salons." 

_That doesn't sound like Clarice at all_, Ardelia thought. 

"What about the DNA?" she asked. 

"Ah. The fun part. Here, I'll do it again right in front of you, so that you can see for yourself." 

The tech brought the slide over to a machine and lifted the cover off it. With a tiny set of tweezers, she removed a small portion from the end of the hair. Then she brought it over to the DNA scanner and put it in the machine. 

When Ardelia had begun her career, DNA technology was brand new and required tests and smears and took a long time. Now, it was merely a matter of inserting the matter into the machine and letting it do its work. The DNA scanner hummed briefly. 

"Here we go," the tech said. A moment later, information began to appear on the tech's computer screen. "Do we have a name to go with this?" 

"No," Ardelia admitted. 

"Too bad." She entered DOE JANE when the computer prompted her for a name. 

SCANNING…the computer reported. 

Information began to fill in a moment later. It identified the hair as female, and a DNA helix began to appear in the upper-right hand quadrant of the monitor. After a minute or two, the words DNA SCAN COMPLETE appeared in the center. 

The tech clicked OK and then clicked the 'Select DNA Database'. She chose 'National Missing Persons Database'. 

"Check this out," the tech said confidently. In 2025, hard drive and processor technology was advanced enough that containing the genomes of all known missing persons, or felons for that matter, was a matter of course. Ardelia shook her head again, thinking how things had changed since she was in the Academy. She remembered when this database had been formed, and how she had insisted that a record be created for Clarice. She had brought in a hair from Clarice's hairbrush, she remembered.

SEARCHING….the computer reported for what seemed like eternity. Then that word was replaced with: 

IM FOUND:0. PM FOUND:1. FM FOUND:0. 

"What does that mean?" 

"It means that our mystery girl is not in the NMP database," she said. "But one of her parents is. No fraternal – brother or sister -- match. " 

"It can do that?" 

"Yep," the tech said. "The program's been refined over the years. It's right 99.9976 percent of the time." 

"Pretty good odds." 

"Yeah, the Supreme Court thought so too. But wait. There's more. Guess who the match is." 

"Who?" 

The tech clicked 'Display Match'. PROCESSING read the screen. A second DNA helix appeared next to the first. A name appeared next to the name DOE JANE. 

STARLING CLARICE M. 

"Looky there," the tech said, pleased with herself. 

"Oh my God," Ardelia mused, more to herself than the tech..

"But wait. There's more." She clicked 'Add Database', then selected 'VICAP Database', then 'Search'. 

SEARCHING…the machine obediently displayed. After cross-referencing both databases, the second DNA helix disappeared and reappeared. A third one appeared next to it. The machine displayed:

IM FOUND: 0. PM FOUND:2. FM FOUND: 0. 

"Check this out, chief," the tech said. She clicked 'Display Match'. A sick sense of dread invaded Ardelia's stomach. She knew what would appear on the screen a split second before it did. 

DOE JANE. STARLING CLARICE M. LECTER HANNIBAL.

Ardelia turned an ashy gray at the sight of that name. "That's…that's Hannibal Lecter's daughter?" 

"Yep," said the tech. 

"And that computer can't be wrong?" 

"Odds are one in three billion," the tech said drily

"So it's not." 

"Nope," the tech agreed. "Congratulations. It's a girl."

Of all the ways Ardelia had expected to hear of Clarice again, this was not it. She turned away from the monitor. Elation, confusion and flat-out horror waged a war in her mind and on her face.

"So Lecter and Starling had a kid. And she's involved in the LECCOPY case, huh?" asked the tech. 

"I don't know," Ardelia said. "Excuse me." She ran to the bathroom and threw up. Her head was spinning. 

Ardelia's search for her friend had become a driving factor in her life. And up until now, it had been fruitless. She had located the home Dr. Lecter had rented on the Chesapeake shore. She had found only the bones of Clarice's father. As a gift to her friend, she had arranged for his bones to be reburied at a cemetery in West Virginia. Over the years, she had waited for a lead, something, anything. 

Her first lead in all these years. Clarice's daughter. Not a passport photo, not a lead from an informant. The girl had been outside her freaking _house_. Right there. For a moment, Ardelia cursed herself. If only she had gotten outside faster. Maybe she could have intercepted her, made her talk, find out where Clarice was after all these years. 

The connection was plain as day. Lecter copycat murders, and the appearance of Lecter's daughter. At her house…and at FBI headquarters. 

_FBI headquarters! _ Ardelia wiped her mouth and ran back to her desk. She called FBI headquarters and got the security office. 

"I need the visitor logs from three days ago. Specifically, the tour groups from 9:00 to 11:00. I want all female names on those tours," she barked at the security officer. 

"OK, Chief Mapp. I'll get them to you." 

"Fax them to me. Now. This is in regard to the LECCOPY case. Highest priority." 

The security officer seemed surprised, but he promised to comply.

Ardelia wasn't sure where she was going with this. There was no evidence tying Clarice's daughter to LECCOPY other than her biological tie to Lecter. Peeking in the windows of your mother's former house wasn't a crime, federal or otherwise. Neither was being fathered by a sociopathic genius. But dammit, she decided, she was going to see this through. She could always clear the kid as a suspect later, she rationalized. But she would have a name for Clarice's daughter by the end of the day. And next she would have Clarice's daughter in her hands. 

Unlike the deceased Mason Verger, Ardelia did not want revenge. She simply wanted to talk to the girl, to find out what had happened, and hopefully to find Clarice. So far, she had neither evidence implicating or exonerating Clarice's daughter. 

_Clarice's daughter_. Much easier to think of her that way. Ardelia did not want to think about the girl's other parent. Unfortunately, she had a vivid imagination. It was a great help in her line of work; she was able to visualize scenes and see things from the points of view of the victim and the offender. It served to torture her now. She envisioned Hannibal Lecter whispering in Clarice's ear, urging her to do unthinkable things. She saw Lecter carrying around his child– _NO! Clarice's daughter. She's Clarice's daughter – _and showing her scenes of violence. Had he taught the kid to practice cannibalism? Torture people? Stab them? Gas them? Her all-too-keen imagination tossed up images of each atrocity committed in the LECCOPY murders. She saw Hannibal Lecter instructing a small girl, a girl with Clarice's eyes. Saw the girl grow to adulthood as an amoral killer, warped by being raised by Hannibal Lecter. Saw Clarice bound to a gurney. The girl over her with a knife in her hand. Hannibal Lecter standing beside her, nodding approvingly. _Yes, sweetheart, now do what you must and let's eat. _Saw the blade come down. _Oh God no. _She threw up again and bit the inside of her cheek to make the horrible visions go away. 

_LECCOPY_, she reminded herself. The _National Tattler_ could suppose that a biological link was enough. The courts demanded a higher standard of proof. She did not even have the name of Clarice's daughter yet. She couldn't help but feel guilty. She knew why – she was attempting to use the resources of the FBI to find Clarice's daughter over a personal issue. 

_I'm not going to falsely accuse her_, Ardelia told herself. _I'm not doing anything wrong. She can be a suspect. For now. Just till I find her. If the evidence exonerates her, so be it. I just want…to talk with her._

…

The emergency room at Maryland-Misericordia was busy. That was nothing new. City life provided the doctors and nurses with plenty of motor vehicle accidents and gunshot wounds to care for. Throughout the din, they worked busily around the clock. Patients were admitted, treated, and either released or admitted. In some cases – more than any ER would like – the patients ended up in the morgue. But there were always more patients, and the pace rarely slackened. 

Barney moved swiftly through this tumult. Although he was a man both older and larger than the norm, he was deceptively fast on his feet. He helped in Trauma Room One, then buzzed out to Two, then checked back at the desk. 

Barney was a man content with his life. He was a nursing supervisor now. Twenty years ago, he had gotten his bachelor's degree in nursing and become an R.N. Before he managed to do that, though, he had appeared before the court in California and requested expungement of his criminal record. He had told the court that he was sorry for his prior crime, and that he had showed this by dint of his ten-year-long good work history and attempts to improve himself. He quoted Socrates and Marcus Aurelius. The judge had been most cooperative, pronouncing that if all former felons were as hardworking and rehabilitated as Barney, the world would be a better place. The judge did not know that Barney had learned about Socrates from Dr. Hannibal Lecter. 

So Barney's criminal record had been expunged, and he had gone on to complete a nursing degree. During his career, he had been promoted to shift supervisor, and finally Nursing Supervisor for the entire hospital. He still pulled ER shifts, though. He liked the ER. He liked the fast pace of the work and the adrenaline rush of pulling a patient back from death's door. 

He still had a fair amount of paperwork to do. Came with the territory. Fill out forms, sign stuff. Barney wrote his name more every day than he had in the years he watched Dr. Lecter at the asylum. So when he saw a FedEx employee looking around quizzically at the charge desk, he went up to her and asked if he could help her. 

"Are you the nursing supervisor?" she asked. 

"Yes, I am," he said. "I'm Barney." 

She consulted her clipboard. "I have a package for you, then." She held out the clipboard. "Please sign here." 

He glanced at her up and down. She held no package that he could see. "Where's the package?" 

"In my truck out front," she said. Then she blushed and looked down. She wore sunglasses under her cap, but Barney could tell that she was embarrassed. "I…um…I was wondering if I could get some help. There are a lot of boxes." 

"What are they?" 

"Standard medical supplies. IV needles, catheters, stuff like that," she said. "But some are coded for the E.R. If you'd like, we can bring them in here rather than through shipping and receiving. That way you get them now," she offered. 

She was probably right, Barney thought. The ER was running low on supplies. If they got to shipping and receiving, it would take a few days for those lazy bastards to unpack them and ship them on their way. 

"I'll be glad to help you, miss," he smiled. "Right this way." 

She walked out through the ambulance bay doors. In the drive-through loop, a FedEx truck was parked off to the side. Barney thought about telling her that it was for ambulances only, and then decided not to. She had pulled it off to the side so that ambulances could get through easily. And after all, it wasn't like she was delivering pizza. The ER needed medical supplies as clearly as it needed patients. 

She opened the back doors of the truck. "There's two dollies in there," she explained. "Just hop on in there, if you don't mind. " 

Barney did as she asked. The interior of the truck was dark and it took a moment or two for his eyes to adjust from the bright daylight outside. Behind him, the FedEx girl jumped up into the truck herself and slammed the doors shut again. 

"Don't you need those open?" he asked. 

"Nope," Susana Alvarez Lecter said. Her right hand came blurring up. In it was a syringe filled with acepromazine. Susana had purchased the syringe and acepromazine at a veterinary supply company outside of Baltimore before waylaying an unfortunate FedEx employee and borrowing the truck. She jabbed the needle into Barney's neck and pressed the plunger quickly. It was a big dose in a critical area, and it went to work quickly. 

Barney fell to his knees as if axed. He reached out and pawed the air. He tried to regain his feet, but the tranquilizer was steadily turning his limbs into water. Susana watched him warily, staying between him and the doors just in case. Finally, he slithered to the floor. Susana took a moment to study his large black features, and satisfied herself that he wasn't going to die. That was good. She had estimated the dosage by guessing at Barney's weight. She jumped into the front seat and pulled the truck into the parking lot. There, she was able to work quietly. She had made some other purchases at a medical supply company in Baltimore itself, and she pulled those out now. 

When Barney awoke, it was night. He could tell immediately through the portholes of the back doors. He groaned and tried to rise. He could not. His arms wouldn't move. When he tried to move his legs, he found that they would not move either. 

It took several moments before he realized what had happened to him. He was still in the back of the truck. But now, he was wearing a straightjacket which held his arms tight across his big chest. He was lying against a furniture dolly, standing up straight. His legs and chest were strapped firmly to the dolly with canvas straps. In the portholes of the back doors, he could faintly see his own reflection. Over his face he wore a plastic mask that covered the lower half of his face. Three metal bars over the mouth opening prevented him from biting. The mask pinched his nose unpleasantly. The straps dug into the back of his head.

Barney's eyes widened. He let out a choked sound. He knew exactly who he was dressed up to look like. 

"Dr. Lecter?" he said into the darkness. This couldn't be. Lecter would not have done this. For one thing, Lecter was too old. Barney himself was almost sixty. But Lecter would have considered this rude. Barney and he had always been civil with each other. 

A footstep echoed on the metal floor of the truck. Barney tried to twist his head around, but he had very little room to maneuver. A shape walked around to stand between him and the doors. Barney struggled in the faint light to make it out. It was difficult. He could see the FedEx uniform, but he knew by now this was no FedEx employee. On her head she wore a black ski mask covering her features. Her eyes were uncovered, though, and the sight of those eyes terrified Barney. Maroon eyes, which seemed to glow red in the faint light. He had seen those eyes before. 

"No," Susana Alvarez Lecter said. "Not Dr. Lecter. But you're close." She smiled a terrible, frightening smile. "I have waited so long to talk to you, Barney. In his name."


	10. Talking and terror

Barney lay against the dolly he was strapped to. He was hyperventilating. He couldn't help it. Before him was a masked monster with red eyes gleaming at him. The monster's spawn. Those maroon eyes declared her pedigree more eloquently than any DNA test the FBI could have devised. 

"You wanted to talk to me?" he asked, trying not to squeak. It might have seemed funny, such a large man terrified of a small woman who weighed less than half of what he did. It wasn't funny to Barney. He could feel sweat trickling down his back under the straitjacket. 

"Yes," Susana said. "I wanted to…ask you some questions. Then settle up your account with my papa." 

"Dr. Lecter." 

"Very good, Barney. Was it the eyes? It's always the eyes, isn't it." 

"Windows to the soul, your father said." 

Susana snorted. "Poetic claptrap. Don't change the subject." 

Barney would've talked about whatever she wanted if it bought him some time. He took a deep breath. 

"Were you planning on screaming, Barney? I'd rather you didn't. It'll echo off the walls and be so very unpleasant for both of us. But if you must…" 

She opened one door and hopped out onto the bumper. At the top of her lungs, she screamed, "HELP! RAPE! POLICE!" She glanced in the porthole at him and grinned at him fiendishly. His heart skipped a beat or two. She leaned out again. 

"I HAVE KIDNAPPED A LARGE BLACK MALE NURSE NAMED BARNEY! I HAVE HIM STRAPPED TO A DOLLY IN THE BACK OF MY TRUCK, WHICH I KILLED SOMEONE ELSE TO GET! AND I DID IT ALL ON PURPOSE!" she screamed out into the night. Then she hopped back in the truck, and raised her eyebrows at him, quite pleased with herself. 

When Susana announced that she had done this all on purpose, Barney broke out laughing. He couldn't help it. He laughed until his sides ached and he heaved for breath. He didn't like the increasing anger in Susana's gaze, but he couldn't have stopped if she had gutted him on the spot. He spluttered out laughter in great heaves of his breath and chuffed in air in painful, short gusts. 

"I'm not laughing at you,--no, please, really…I—I just," he gasped. 

"A bit stressed out, are we?" Susana asked archly. The menace in her voice was unmistakable.

Barney's small teeth bit down hard on his tongue. A few moments later, he felt the warm salty taste of his own blood in his mouth, but he was able to stop laughing. 

"Yes," he husked. "I didn't mean to laugh at you. Or your father." 

"Good." 

"You were showing me that screaming won't do me any good. That no one will hear me and that it will just annoy you." 

"Correct," she said. 

"Your father must have taught you about planning. He was always an excellent planner. Taught me about it too." 

"He was," Susana said after a brief pause. Her tone made it obvious. 

"I'm sorry," Barney said with real regret. Those two words, delivered with real sadness and sympathy, did a lot to help win him back his life. 

"So what did you want to talk to me about, then?" he asked. "I'll tell you anything you want to know." 

"What was it like, guarding him?" she asked curiously. The question was so basic, so common that Barney thought he might laugh again. 

"Well," he said, "we were civil. Always tried to be. He didn't talk a lot at first. There were some times he would go for months without speaking. I was taking some courses by mail, and he showed some interest in them and told me to get some books." 

"Go on," she said. 

Barney felt a bit like Scherezade in A thousand and one nights. His life depended on how long he told this young monster a story that interested her. 

"Mostly, we talked at night. That was when the crying died down to a dull roar." He strained. "I had a lot of respect for him, though." 

"Respect? You took away his mail privileges and put him in restraints at times." 

Barney felt sweat break out on his forehead. _Shit_. 

"That was security. There was stuff I had to do. He knew the rules. Security was never personal." 

"I'm sure he felt that way," she said drily. 

"Actually, no. He knew it wasn't personal. I made sure of that." He squinted at her and smiled, displaying his small white teeth. "Can you tell me your name? I like to know a person's name." 

"No," Susana said sharply. "I'm his daughter. That's all you need to know." 

"Can I guess?" he said slyly. 

Her eyes narrowed. She studied him carefully for a moment or two. "Sure," she said guardedly. 

Barney noticed she seemed bothered. That made him nervous. Had he known the reason why, he might not have been so worried. Susana was bothered because she was not able to follow her normal plan. 

"Well," he said. "Dr. Lecter always liked Suetionius. He said if he had a child he might consider that for a name. But he also said that he wouldn't ever name a child something that stuck out too much." He chuckled and smiled. He knew from long experience that a killer often has a harder time killing a victim that is humanized to him – or her. "He said if his name was Bob or Dave Lecter instead of Hannibal that he might have been able to get a few more in before he was caught. So I'd bet your name is Sue, or something like that. Something a bit more nondescript." 

The results scared him. He saw a flash of surprise in her eyes and she took a step forward. Her hand went for her pocket. Perhaps he had hit too close to the mark. 

"Okay. Okay. Tell you what. I'll just call you Sue and I won't ask if that's actually your name or not. That sound okay to you? Can I just call you Sue?" His tone was soothing and calm. He tried not to betray the fear he showed. 

She leaned in close to him. "Tell me more," she said. 

"That's really about it. Your father and I talked about a whole lot of things. Genetics. Philosophy. I think he liked teaching me." 

"Were you a willing student?" 

"Oh, yes," he said. "I liked hearing about what your father had to say, Sue. I wouldn't be where I am if not for him." 

"So what did he educate you on?" 

Barney smiled again, then wondered if she could see it through the mask. "Oh, there's a lot. I don't know if I can even remember them all." 

"You better," she said, although Barney noted that her tone did not carry any real menace. 

"Genetics, for example. He had a lot to say on how characteristics are inherited. With me, I never really went to school, so he had to start from the bottom with me. He taught me a lot about chemistry. Medicine. Genetics. Sciences, things like that. You have to remember, Sue, I never went to college until I was much older. Barely graduated high school." 

"Were you afraid of him?" 

Barney didn't know if this was the right answer or not, but decided that honesty would be the best policy. Lecter had been almost a human polygraph, able to discern lies with razor accuracy. He might well have taught a few tricks to his daughter. 

"At first, a bit. As we got to talking, I got less and less afraid of him. I always dealt foursquare with him. Same as I'm dealing with you. I think he respected that."

"Are you afraid of me?" she asked. 

Barney mulled over his words before answering. "I'm afraid you're going to hurt me, or kill me," he said carefully. "I see you getting angry occasionally and I get afraid that you'll lose control." 

"But are you afraid of _me_?" she persisted. 

"Right now? Yes." 

"Sort of silly, don't you think? A big, strong man, afraid of a little girl like me." She came close to him and ground her hip against him in a circular motion. He was shocked speechless for a moment or two. 

"The-the big man's strapped down and the lit-little girl has a knife," he stuttered. 

"That's true. But I know you're afraid. I can smell it." Her nostrils flared under the ski mask. Barney thought crazily of her father in his cell, and his powerful sense of smell. Of course, no extra powers of smell were needed to smell the fear-sweat Barney had been basting in. 

"Can you smell me, Barney?" she asked mockingly. 

Barney toyed with the idea of telling her she used Evyan skin cream, and sometimes wore L'air du temps, but not today. He decided that sarcasm was not called for, given his position. She probably knew the line.

"No," he said. 

"You sure?" She pressed herself against him. In any other case he would have been delighted to have a woman her age press herself against him, but now he was simply trying to think. "No perfume? No powder? Can you smell my—" she stopped and stared into space with a frustrated look. "My _chacon_?" 

Barney looked blank behind his mask. "Your what?" 

"My _chacon. _My _concha. _My--," her frustrated look became more intense. Hannibal Lecter had taken pains to teach his daughter English, but he had stepped around profanity as deftly as a man will step around where the family dog has defecated on the grass. "You know," she said. 

"No, I don't," Barney said, and then it hit him like a ton of bricks. English wasn't her first language. Sounded like Spanish. And where did they say _chacon _instead of _concha? _

She looked mad now. Then the memories of his trip to Argentina twenty-five years ago weighed in, and he remembered what she was trying to say. 

"Oh!" he crowed. "I…um…I know what you mean. And no, I can't smell that. And the English word for that is…well, I was raised not to say words like that around women." 

"Yeah," she said acidly. Barney realized now: she was frustrated not only because of her lack of knowledge of English profanities. She was mad because she thought she looked foolish. And that was bad. 

"Hey, hey, it's okay," he said soothingly. "You speak English very well. I didn't even pick up on an accent. And I've been to Buenos Aires, and nobody there speaks as well as you do." 

When he said _Buenos Aires_, all hell broke loose. Her eyes flared behind their eyeholes. He saw her entire body tremble and could have sworn that her eyes did glow red with her fury. 

"_WHAT?"_ she screamed, and her right hand dove for her pocket. It came out with a wicked-looking knife. It clicked open in a trice and she leaped on him. Barney's dolly crashed against the wall and came to rest at a forty-five-degree angle. The blade touched the corner of his eye and began to dig in. It hurt like hell. He could see her flaring eyes and her trembling lips. Barney had dealt with people who were very worked up, and he knew that her already waning self-control could snap in an instant if he said the wrong thing. Whether he lived or died would be determined in the next few minutes. 

The knife continued to dig into the hard bone of his eye socket. Her other hand grabbed a fistful of the straitjacket. He could feel the energy in her, thrumming like a live wire. In this state, she could snap his neck and never feel a thing, at least until the next morning. When she spoke, her voice was shaky but controlled.

"Barney," she said. "Tell me _this instant_ how you knew or I swear to God I'll cut your eye out." 

Barney was scared shitless, but he knew that he had to control himself if he was going to get her calmed down. He had spent a lot of his career calming people down. Now his life depended on it. He took a deep breath and tried to get himself under control. 

"I'll tell you, Sue. I promise. I need you to take the knife away from my eye." 

"Tell me _now_ or I'll put the knife in your eye," she threatened. 

"Sue, it hurts. You're hurting me. Is that what you want? Do you want me to feel pain? Cause I am. It hurts like hell. Move the knife and I'll tell you." 

Barney's eye teared up. The tears dripped into the wound at the corner of his eye. It stung and burned like hell. His mouth despaired as the blade dug in. He made eye contact with her and kept it on, letting her see his pain. If she was a sadist, it would only backfire, but he thought it might work. 

"You're hurting me, Sue," he managed. "Stop hurting me and I'll tell you what you want to know." 

Her eyes calmed then, and the nervous thrumming of her body slowed down. He figured she would be tired, hopefully disinterested in killing him. When the madmen on the ward threw a temper fit, it usually wasn't pretty for a while, but they were usually exhausted after that. Thankfully, she drew the knife away and looked at the blood on the blade as if puzzled how it got there. 

Barney coughed. Blood trickled down his face like dark tears. 

"Tell me," she said dangerously. 

"Well," he said, "twenty-five years ago, I wanted to see every Vermeer in the world before I died. There's one in Buenos Aires. So I went…and I went to the opera while I was there. The Teatro Colon. And…I saw Dr. Lecter down there. And Starling. Clarice Starling. At least I thought it was them." 

"Did they see you?" 

"I don't know. Dr. Lecter looked at me. But that was twenty-five years ago. That's all. I swear to God. I…I don't know what set you off like that." He wondered privately if she was from Buenos Aires. Personally, Barney had believed that Dr. Lecter would move on from place to place. But after such a graphic demonstration about what saying the wrong thing to dangerous people got him, he would no more ask than he would suggest she take off her mask. 

"You seem to know a lot about me," she said archly, but calmly. 

"Sue, I don't know anything about you. It's all guesswork. I knew that people said…well, _chacon_, down in Argentina, that's all." He was trembling himself and felt very cold. "I don't want you to hurt me, Sue. I don't want you to go off like that, either. I don't like seeing you so upset." 

She looked away and put the knife back in her pocket. Barney got the idea that she was embarrassed and didn't know what to do next. She opened the back door of the truck and hopped out on the bumper. 

"I need to settle your account now," she muttered, and then ran off into the darkness. Barney did not like the sound of those words at all. He caught a glimpse of her through the oval portholed windows, and noticed she had taken off the mask. It looked like she was unlocking a door. She wasn't wearing the mask. 

_If she comes back without it on, I'm dead. She'll kill me. _

She began walking back towards the truck, and still did not have the mask on. She was too far away and it was too dark for him to make out much of her face, but she looked a lot like Starling, he thought. Then she moved out of the way so he could no longer see her. Barney shivered. _Please put the mask back on. I won't tell the cops anything. God, if you get me out of this I'll go to church. I'll become a damn monk if you want. Just make her come back with the mask on. _

The front door of the truck opened. She walked up behind him and grabbed the dolly. Barney turned his head as much as he could and then clamped his eyes shut. For a moment he thought about Dr. Lecter telling him about Schrodinger's cat. As long as he kept his eyes shut, she was both wearing and not wearing the mask. Only once he opened his eyes would one become true and the other false. 

"C'mon, Barney," she said. 

He opened his eyes slowly. 

The masked girl stared back at him. 

Barney exhaled a great sigh of relief. 

She wheeled him out onto the bumper. The truck came with a power hoist on the back for heavier packages, and Barney was indeed a heavy package. Hydraulics hissed as she lowered him to the ground. 

"Know where you are?" she asked, sounding almost like she had a surprise for him. 

Barney studied the building in the darkness. "It's too dark." 

"Baltimore Internet Museum," she informed him. 

Barney groaned. The Baltimore Internet Museum was built on the site of the asylum he had worked in all those years ago. It was a common matter to joke about. Barney had refused to go to the museum since it had opened. 

"Sue, don't kill me," he said. "I know you want to…settle up some account or something, but don't kill me. For your dad." 

"I'm not going to kill you, Barney," Susana said dispassionately. 

"That's good. What are you planning, then?" 

"You were friends with my father and so I won't kill you. But you do have to see how life was for him." 

"Sue, that whole museum has been remodeled. They tore everything out. There's nothing there for you." 

"Not the basement," she countered. 

Barney did not know that and shut up. She opened a door and pushed him inside. He wondered how she had gotten keys and decided it was better not to ask. She rolled him over to the freight elevator. 

"You never thought about what it was like for my papa, did you?"

"How do you mean?" 

"Being locked in the cell. Knowing you won't get out. Ever. Knowing that those are the boundaries you will spend your days in. I'm not going to kill you, Barney, but you will walk a mile in my papa's shoes." 

The elevator door opened and she rolled him out. Barney was down in the dungeon for the first time in years. It, at least, had remained constant. His former office, the cells, the barred gates. She rolled him down to the last cell. Dr. Lecter's cell. 

The other cells had contained boxes and equipment. Dr. Lecter's was empty. She rolled him into the cell and spread her arms wide. There was no mattress and the toilet seat had been stolen years ago. 

"Here you are, Barney," she said. "I'm going to lock you in here." 

"And?" 

"And leave you here," she said, staring at him as if he was daft. 

"Sue, if you're going to kill me, do it quick with the knife and don't lock me in here to starve to death. I never, never, messed with your father's food or tortured him like that." 

"You won't _die_," she said. "Are you nuts? Right overhead is the museum's accounting department." She indicated a bucket of freshly drawn water and some canned food with a can opener. "It's Friday night. They'll be in Monday. If you make enough noise, they'll hear you." 

"Sue--," 

"Quiet, Barney." 

Barney closed his mouth. 

"You'll have three days or so in this cell, alone, feeling the way my papa felt and knowing what he knew. If you're smart, Barney, that'll be it. A stupid man would wait half an hour after I leave and scream and holler so no one will hear him. A smarter man would take the three days, knowing that it'll happen anyway, and concentrate on what is being taught so that his account is settled once and for all. Then, on Monday, when someone will be there to hear you, then make noise. They''l find you, out you come.""

"Or you'll kill me." 

"I don't _want _to kill you, Barney," she said. "If you force me to, that's one thing. But you haven't so far. Now: if I take you off that dolly, are you going to be nice?" 

"Yes," Barney said. When you were beat, you were beat, and he was beat. 

She unstrapped him from the dolly and let him take a step or two away. Then she ordered him to face the wall and pushed the dolly out into the corridor. 

"Now face the wall and don't you dare turn around until you hear the lock snap," she said. "You know I don't use Mace or a stun gun." 

"Okay, Sue," he said calmly. 

He felt her fingers, light and quick, move across the straps of the straitjacket. Then her footsteps moving out of the cell. Finally, the click of the heavy lock snapping shut. Barney pulled out of the straitjacket and wrinkled his nose as the fear-sweat smell came out. His T-shirt was soaked. He took it off distastefully. There was a bar of soap on the supplies pile she had left him. He tried his sink and discovered that it worked. He pulled off the mask and threw it into the corner.

Shirtless, he spread his arms and looked at her. 

"This really what you want, Sue? To lock me in here like this?" 

"You'll do three days. Papa did eight years." 

Put like that, it almost seemed reasonable. 

"Were you planning to kill me, Sue?" he asked gently. 

She pondered for a moment. "No," she said. "I thought I might, but Papa spoke well of you. This will teach you how it was for him." 

That pleased Barney a great deal more than she would ever know. 

"Give me your straitjacket and mask and I'll give you a clean shirt," she offered. She held up an old shirt from the asylum days. Barney doubted it was anything resembling clean, but he agreed. 

"Same drill as with papa. Use the document carrier." 

Barney gave her the damn things and took his shirt. She looked in at him. 

"Keep your mouth shut, Barney, and you'll never see me again. Tell anyone, especially the cops, and I'll find you. I did it once, I can do it again." 

Barney sat down on the mattressless bunk. "I'm not going to, Sue," he said resignedly. 

"Goodbye, then, Barney." 

"Goodbye, Sue." 

"_Sa na_," she chirped – actually _chirped_ – and vanished into the hallway. Barney sat alone in the dark, wearing the old shirt, and began the long, interminable wait until Monday morning. 

"Sa na," he mused. "What the hell does that mean?" 

Above him, an engine started. 


	11. Collision

_Author's note: _

I ought to put a disclosure here (it IS chapter 11, about time, huh?), so here goes. 

Some characters in this work are the property of Thomas Harris. No infringement is intended and I am not profiting off this, just telling a story. Any character not owned by Thomas Harris is owned by me. 

Thanks to everyone who reads and reviews, especially chameleon302 whose kind words and enthusiasm have helped keep this story afloat. 

And with that, Dear Reader, we shall begin, but I will indulge myself in just this: 

Bet you didn't see this coming! 

Ardelia sat back at her desk and stared at the paper thoughtfully. Any guilty feelings she had held about seeking out Clarice's daughter were gone. She now had a very good reason to seek her out. Specifically, kidnapping and false imprisonment. 

She had seen the police report from Barney's kidnapping and had just interviewed him herself. When he told his tale of being kidnapped by Hannibal Lecter's daughter and held captive in Lecter's old cell for three days, Ardelia had been shocked. Her other profilers were in her office with her, batting ideas back and forth about Barney's testimony. 

"How do we know it's the same person as LECCOPY?" asked Agent Witt. "Completely different MO's." 

"People change MO's. The signature isn't what changes," replied Agent Meyer. 

"Yeah, but look at the cases. The LECCOPY killings were _killings_. Tattler employees murdered because they published articles about Lecter. Barney wasn't killed. She had ample opportunity to. Plus she wore a mask, and we'd have heard about someone wearing a mask at the LECCOPY sites. Or Barney could be making the whole thing up." 

"You think he's lying?" Ardelia asked. 

"I'm not sure. But think about it. Barney's story is that," he grabbed a piece of paper and examined it. "a girl or young woman, a _foot_ shorter than him, slender, drugged him and tied him to a dolly. Now we know Barney has sold Lecter memorabilia in the past. Maybe he's just trying to squeeze some more green out of a dying franchise." 

"You don't believe the story?" Ardelia questioned again. 

"Based on Barney's description of his assailant, he should have been able to pick her up and break her in half. And we can't forget the Lecter sales, either."

"I'll give you the Lecter sales," Meyer admitted. "But how come she couldn't have drugged him?" 

"She might have. How did she get him on the dolly? Do you think it's likely a little thing like what he describes could have hauled around two hundred fifty pounds worth of deadweight? Then there's the little foray into Spanish, and then that nonsense phrase at the end." 

"_Sa na? _Did we ever get a meaning on that?" 

"No," Ardelia said. "According to the Argentinian embassy, that phrase has no meaning at all in Spanish or Argentinian slang." 

Witt and Meyer continued bickering back and forth. Ardelia thought of pointing out that Clarice's daughter had appeared both at the FBI and at her home, but didn't. Even if true, they didn't mean she had kidnapped Barney or done the LECCOPY murders. Witt would gleefully point that out to her. Besides, there was a big old hole in that theory. The woman Ardelia had seen had blue eyes. Barney's assailant had maroon eyes similar to Dr. Lecter's. 

As the two men continued arguing, Ardelia saw it. On her desk was the requested logs from FBI headquarters showing the visitor logs. She had gone down the list of names and eliminated those who had airtight alibis for the times of the murders. 

Among the names left to check was, "Alvarez, Susana." 

Barney's statement said, "_Then I said, 'Goodbye, Sue.'. She said 'Sa na' back and left."_

Sue sa na.

"Oh my God, she told Barney her real name," Ardelia murmured. Her profilers looked at her.

"We're going to bring her in," Ardelia announced. "Kidnapping. It'll give us a hook to hang her on for the time being." 

Witt looked at her, shut up, and nodded. 

"Your call, chief. Can I say something, though?" 

"You know you can," she said, and meant it. She had always entitled her profilers to speak their mind, whether or not they agreed with her. 

"First off, even if the USDA indicts her, you'll never get a conviction. Not enough evidence. And if we go behavioral and say she could have done it, you're handing her lawyer a big old gun to use if you try to pinch her for LECCOPY. Crimes are totally different." 

"I'm aware of that," Ardelia said. "Convictions are not our job." 

"Secondly, you gotta find her before you can bring her in.. And if she is Lecter's kid, then I bet you either Susana Alvarez is an alias, or if it is her real name, then wherever she's staying will be under another ID." 

"We can deal with that," she said. "Get a sweep of all hotels. Look for guests named Alvarez, Lecter…," she paused, "and Starling. And any of Lecter's old aliases. Also, get West Virginia State Police on the horn." 

Witt raised an eyebrow. "You got an idea cooking, chief?" 

Ardelia nodded. "It if had been last week, we'd be screwed," she said enigmatically. "But I bet you I can tell you where Clarice's daughter will be tonight." 

…

Night fell over West Virginia. The city of Wheeling, not far to the north, honked with traffic in the manner of all cities. Here, in this small town, the night wrapped most of the rural area in black velvet unpierced by light. The town was lit with small streetlamps in some cases a hundred years old. Children playing in the street fled inside as the night approached, urged on by mothers following in the brook-no-nonsense-from-younguns tradition that had been handed down to them through the years. The town's two police cars cruised up and down the side streets making sure everything was safe. 

In the town graveyard, darkness ruled. There were no lights to interrupt the rest of the dead. Monuments marked each spot. Some were large and garish, some were flat and low down to the earth as if to say that the person who rested there was unimportant. Most were somewhere in between. 

Susana Alvarez Lecter walked along the service road of the graveyard and navigated to a particular grave. She was dressed all in black, as if to mourn. She glanced back and forth at the town, squared her shoulders as if gathering courage, and continued on. 

Ahead was was the grave marker Susana sought. It was made of gray granite, with the words JOHN STARLING laser-engraved on its polished surface. Below the dates of his birth and death was a sheriff's star and the words KILLED IN THE LINE OF DUTY. 

Susana was nervous. She had never been raised with anything resembling religion in her life. Her father deemed it all superstitious claptrap; her mother had internalized the rules and standards of her religion but none of the faith. Susana agreed with her father: she thought religion was a bunch of nonsense made up to cow people into believing that 'good' behavior would be rewarded and 'bad' behavior punished. Not to mention ensuring that the commoners remained the compliant sheep of the powerful. Susana found churches attractive only as architecture and art, and regarded anyone who claimed religion as deluded. 

But she had known about her grandfather for as long as she could remember. Her mother had told her about him, and to the young girl it had been apparent that her grandfather was beyond judgment or anger. He could not be argued with or painted badly in any way. This grave was as close as Susana had ever known to hallowed ground. And it was with trepidation that she stepped forward and eyed the gravestone. This was the resting place of the saint. John Starling, law officer and loving father.

Susana Alvarez Lecter, killer of nine people, swallowed nervously and addressed a dead man. 

"Hi," she said self-consciously, and put her hands in her jacket pockets for a second before pulling them out. "I'm Susana. I'm your granddaughter." 

She waited a bit before remembering that no response would come, and then continued. 

"This is my first time in America," she confided, "so this is my first time meeting you. You died before I was born. A long time ago, from what Mother told me. She told me about you. I would have liked to meet you, I guess." 

She shifted from foot to foot. "I know that Papa – _my _papa – had dug you up. And I guess that was sort of rude. I'm sorry if it was. He had to do it, though. Mother was too attached to you. I mean, -" she added lamely, as if the dead man had expressed offense at her comment, "she could not be happy until she let you go. And you would have wanted her to be happy, wouldn't you? She said you would. And besides, Papa bought you a much nicer coffin than what you had." 

Susana sat down Indian-style in front of the stone and traced the star on the gravestone with her fingers. 

"I saw your picture when I was very young," Susana confided. "Mother still keeps one picture of you in her study. She thinks papa doesn't know about it, but he does. Always has. She showed me when I was little. You were very tall. Taller than my papa." 

Susana swiped at her eyes, but it was only to scratch an itch. Her eyes remained dry and her face calm. Her fingers scratched at good high cheekbones not unlike those belonging to the skull six feet under her. 

"Mother missed you most of her life," she said, as if betraying a great secret. "I miss my papa, too. That's why I came here. I had to settle up his accounts. But you don't want to hear about that," she said abruptly. John Starling had been a law officer and would probably disapprove of his granddaughter's activities. 

"I brought you something," she said, reaching into her pocket. "One of them I wanted to have put in your coffin, but it's too late. I got a case for it, that should protect it." Carefully, Susana Alvarez Lecter placed three objects at the foot of her grandfather's grave. Then she stood, wiping the dirt from her hands. 

"Goodbye, _abuelo_," she said. Her smile was soft and sad. 

Flashlight beams and the high beams of a police cruiser pierced the sanctuary of the graveyard. Police radios chattered. Susana's head jolted around. 

Ardelia Mapp stepped from behind a larger monument. She held a 9mm in one hand and a flashlight in the other. 

"Susana Alvarez, you are under arrest," she called out. "Put your hands on your head and kneel down on the ground." 

Susana's head swiveled towards her. In the flashlight beam, her maroon eyes reflected back diabolically at Mapp. For just a moment, she tilted her head as her father would have done and stared at Mapp, taking in what had just happened. 

Then, with deceptive speed, she turned on her heel and ran. 

Three FBI agents, two West Virginia state troopers, and two township police officers looked at each other for a long moment. Ardelia broke the impasse by running after Susana. The others fell into line behind her. 

It wasn't easy going. A four-foot stone wall circled the graveyard. In a motion smooth and silent as the wind, Susana leaped the wall and kept on going. Ardelia grimly pursued, her mouth drawn down into a quivering bow with the effort. 

Police officers are commonly trained not to attempt to catch up to a fleeing suspect unless it is necessary. It is much easier to simply keep up and simply wait until the suspect collapses from exhaustion. At that point, the officer simply picks up the suspect and reads them their rights. 

It was great in theory, Ardelia Mapp thought, but when you are fifty-four and have spent most of your career indoors in an office and your suspect is a twenty-one-year-old with legs like a gazelle, it is not quite so easy in practice. She couldn't help but admire Susana's fleeing form. 

_She even runs like a predator. No wasted motion._ And it was true. Susana showed no signs of tiring. Ardelia was not so fortunate. Her lungs were screaming at her for more air. Her legs threatened to exhaust themselves. Muscles groaned and cried out against their unexpected use. Ahead was a county highway, fenced off. Ardelia was never so happy to see a fence in her life. It meant she only had to run just a little further. She dug down into her reserves and determined to catch Clarice's daughter. 

Susana saw it and increased her speed herself. She sprang into the air like a big cat, grabbing the chain-link fence and scaling it as efficiently as a leopard. She wriggled over the three strands of barbed wire meant to keep people from doing exactly what she was doing, and then vaulted to the ground below, her arms out for balance. She landed neatly on her feet and went almost to her knees, like a gymnast. 

Ardelia reached the fence. For just a moment, the two women were separated only by the chain link barrier. Their eyes touched. Susana's eyes seemed calculating and unemotional. Her face was composed and expressionless. Ardelia thought she nodded once as a 'worthy adversary' sort of gesture. 

_Stop_, Ardelia tried to shout, but her screaming muscles demanded all the air her lungs could provide. _You better at least be tired, you little bitch_, she thought. Only a thin sheen of perspiration was visible on Susana's forehead. 

Susana turned then, gravel spraying from the soles of her shoes as she ran up the shoulder to the highway. Ardelia knew she had lost. She was focused on the same thing Susana was: the fence on the other side of the highway. She could hear the others catching up behind her, but it was too late. All Susana had to do was run up a short hill, cross the highway, down the other side, and scale the second fence. Beyond there was the complete darkness of a forest. They could try to pursue her, but they'd need bloodhounds to have any hope of catching her. 

Susana made it onto the road and ran across. Ardelia's face congealed with horror. She knew exactly what was going to happen, and could do nothing to stop it. She tried to suck in air to warn Susana, but could only watch and wheeze.

The vehicle was an old pickup truck, built around the turn of the century. Country music played from the speakers. The driver was driving at the lawful speed of fifty miles an hour when Susana ran out in front of him. To his credit, he tried to brake as soon as he could and left several feet of rubber on the road. He would later babble nervously over and over that he hadn't seen her, really, he hadn't, and he was a good driver. 

The truck hit Susana doing at least forty. In a bizarre twist of fate, she was shown more mercy than any of her victims. She was aware merely of a bright light and sound on her left side. There was one strong but short burst of pain and force as the grille hit the left side of her body, breaking all the ribs on that side, and then, mercifully, everything drew her down into a pool of black.

Ardelia did not. She watched and heard the whole thing. The squeal of the brakes to the sickening _whump_ sound of Susana's body smacking into the grill of the car, to the somehow hard sound of Susana's head striking the asphalt. She hung on the fence for a moment or two and then began the slow climb over it to get to the scene. She flashed her ID at the driver, and then ignored him, bending over the fallen girl on the highway. Susana was still breathing, but Ardelia did not know for how long. She took several moments to get her breath and then pulled out her FBI satellite phone. The medical chopper could get there in twenty minutes. 

"I'm sorry, Clarice," she said. 

The other officers made the scene, shamefaced about being outrun by an older woman. The local officer was the last one on the scene. Ardelia glanced at him. 

"Did we see what she left on the grave?" 

"Yes, ma'am, we did," he answered. "That must be the girl who came in before. Asked for a badge, she did." 

"A badge?" 

"Yes'm. She said her grandpa hadn't never been buried with one and that he would've liked it. Chief let her have one to give her grandpa." 

"You just gave someone off the street a police badge." Ardelia's tone echoed disbelief. 

"Now ma'am, there ain't no reason to take on like that. We're not bumpkins here. She told us _what_ she wanted it for. It wasn't for her. It was for her grandfather, Officer John Starling, who died in the line of duty. When the chief found out he wasn't buried with a badge we all felt real bad." The officer drew himself up proudly. "So don't you give me that look, ma'am. Unless you don't think a law officer ought to be buried with his star if he so wants. Or that we ought to set wrong things right."

"I'm sorry," she said. She remembered Starling once expressing bitterness that the village had taken back her father's star. How fitting that her daughter brought one to him after all these years.. "Do we know what else she left there?" 

"Yes, ma'am," he said, and his answer brought tears to Ardelia's eyes. It was so Clarice, in a way. Hannibal Lecter would have considered it awfully maudlin and tedious and would have ridiculed it mercilessly. But, after all, Susana was not only Hannibal Lecter's daughter. 

"She left him an orange and a SNO BALL from the market," he said seriously.

"Chopper's on its way, chief," Witt said. 

Ardelia sat down on the asphalt next to Susana and tried not to look at the spreading pool of blood under her head. _Probably nothing, scalp wounds bleed heavily, she'll be OK._ She carefully pushed a stray lock of brown hair away from Susana's cheek. Brown hair she had seen before. On the half of Susana's face that she could see, the clear stamp of Clarice Starling's features was strong. With her eyes closed, Ardelia could be forgiven for forgetting her diabolical father's influence on her. 

Ardelia was confused. On the one hand, there was evidence that Susana had kidnapped a man and perhaps killed nine other people, five of those police officers. Ardelia preferred the black and white, good and evil ways of life. She didn't _want_ serial killers to bring SNO BALLS, oranges, and a long-overdue star to their grandfathers' graves. It was a maudlin touch, bizarre in its normality. It was something that Clarice would do. Was Susana a dangerous, amoral killer _and _a loving daughter and granddaughter? Were the natures of Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling intertwined in her as completely as their biological natures?

There was only one thing she could do for Clarice, so she did it. She sat on the asphalt with Susana – the target of her manhunt, her only suspect in a series of vicious murders, the daughter of her long-lost best friend – and waited with her, humming a cradle song under her breath. She paid little attention to the lights of the cruisers blocking off the scene with their flashers. The entire scene lit up: blue-black, blue-black. Her thoughts were elsewhere. She thought of Clarice, and wondered where she was and what would happen when she found out what happened to her daughter. She wondered if Susana was Clarice's only daughter. She thought of the children she had never had herself. She thought of this afternoon, when the Argentinian embassy had obligingly sent over a photostat of Susana's passport. She remembered how she felt when she opened it to see Susana's face, the face of the young Clarice that had been haunting her, and the combination stabbing pain and elation when she had seen Susana's full legal name: Susana Ardelia Alvarez. 

The chopper came and loaded Susana inside, taking off swiftly for Wheeling Hospital. Ardelia let them take her and hoped she pulled through. One of the local boys offered her a ride back to the station, where her car was. She accepted. The cruiser was a warm, safe bastion of sanity as they drove back to the police station.

"So, how'd you know she would be at that grave tonight?" asked the local cop. 

She smiled wanly. "Study your own history, Sergeant," she said. "Today is the anniversary of John Starling's death." 

…

__

Author's note part II: 

Well, as I said, I bet you didn't see that coming. 

At this point I'm a bit torn on where to go from here – the major points to tie up will be tied up, but a lot depends on whether Susana survives or not. 

So tell me what you think. You can, a la Tinkerbell in Peter Pan, clap your hands and say "I believe! I believe in sociopathic killers!", or hang your head a la Maxwell Smart (from Get Smart, all you young'uns who don't remember 70's TV) and say sorrowfully, "If only she had used her powers for Niceness instead of Evil." If enough people express interest in Susana living or dying, I'll write the next chapter according to their wishes. 

It's late, and that's probably why the preceding paragraph seems hysterically funny right now. So good night, Dear Reader, and we'll take up this tale again soon.


	12. The Return

Susana Alvarez Lecter was airlifted to Wheeling Hospital and was examined and determined to be in critical condition. She was rushed into emergency surgery, where she remained for several hours. She had suffered massive internal bleeding, and the prognosis did not look good. 

Nonetheless, she had points in her favor. She was young and strong. She was still breathing, and the surgeons were able to repair her damaged lung. Once they began transfusions, she rallied. After seven hours and as many bleeding organs repaired, the surgical team had done all they could do. Susana remained unconscious and was transferred to the intensive care unit. 

In Washington, Chicago, and Baltimore, the engines of law enforcement sat waiting to see if they would be needed, or if fate herself would punish Susana in a means they could only dream of. The hospital had standing orders to contact Section Chief Ardelia Mapp the minute Susana Alvarez regained consciousness. 

At Quantico and Arlington, Ardelia Mapp could not sleep. Over and over, when she closed her eyes, she heard the sounds of the truck striking Susana's body and saw the blood creeping out from under her head. At work, her profilers saw her bloodshot eyes and haunted demeanor and said nothing. She jumped every time the phone rang and snapped at some of her workers. 

Three days after the accident, Susana complicated things for a large group of people employed in various government capacities. She did so by opening her eyes, trying to sit up, and asking where she was. In so doing, she caused many closed-door meetings and phone calls to take place. 

The police agencies – the FBI and the Chicago Police Department – were out for blood and wanted Susana in custody immediately and on trial as soon as possible. The district attorneys for the areas took one look at what the police had – there was no hard proof that Susana Alvarez had even _been _in Chicago, as well as no witnesses, DNA, or fingerprint evidence – and turned gray. The FBI and Chicago PD said that one should not get away with killing police officers. The D.A.'s pointed out that if she was found not guilty, she would get away with it as well, and told the police to go back and come back with more evidence. They also desperately wanted this kept out of the press. Neither DA liked the idea of having their picture above an article describing how they were pulling a critically injured woman out of the hospital and into the courtroom. 

For the time being, Susana remained in the intensive care unit of Wheeling Hospital. She was told that she remained under arrest and was read her rights. A West Virginia state trooper was detailed to her room in plainclothes to ensure she did not attempt escape. He soon learned that this was not likely. Susana was able to walk, but only at a slow, painful hobble. She preferred to stay in her room, anyway. 

The Cook County DA and USDA for Baltimore eventually concluded that conviction based on what they had was unlikely, and even if they did, the chance for reversal on appeal was high. All that the FBI had managed to prove was that Susana was the daughter of Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling, which was not illegal under either federal law or the laws of Illinois. They decided to charge her with the kidnapping of Barney and hoped like hell that she would cut a deal. As far as they knew, Susana had not yet hired an attorney. Thank God for small favors. 

Ardelia Mapp volunteered to bring the deal to Wheeling. The DA's believed this to be a great idea, thinking that the FBI's chief mindhunter would be the perfect person to wangle a confession out of Susana along with a deal for the LECCOPY murders. They did not realize that Ardelia had her own agenda. 

As Ardelia drove out towards Wheeling, she pondered for a moment. Why was she doing this? 

To assuage her conscience, she admitted to herself. She had never intended for this to happen. And it was her operation that had caused it. She could point out to herself that Susana had chosen to flee, but she knew better. She should have made sure there were a few young cops on the squad, young men or women who could have caught her quicker. 

Also, she admitted, there was something darker. She needed to know about Clarice, even after all these years. Susana was the only one who could give her that information. What price she was willing to pay she did not know. She knew she would not let Susana go free, but there was a vast gray area she was afraid to ponder. 

At the hospital, she saw the plainclothes trooper at the door of Susana's room. As he realized she intended to enter, he stood up and flashed his badge. 

"This is a private room, ma'am," he said abruptly. His speech was colored with a thick West Virginia accent that made her ache for Starling. 

Ardelia flashed her own ID at him. "I know. Ardelia Mapp, FBI. I'm here to interrogate her." 

"No one called me," he said. 

Ardelia grinned uncomfortably. "This is…how can I put it…in regards to a deal." 

The trooper took a moment to process that and then nodded. "On the Q.T." 

"You got it." 

"Well, have at it, then. She's awake." 

Ardelia frowned. "I'd like to take her somewhere else, if you don't mind," he said. 

"There's a lounge for family and visitors that's big and usually pretty empty. You can take her there if you sign for her." 

"That'll do, I guess." 

"All righty then." The trooper produced a clipboard and a pair of handcuffs. "Sign here, just put 'interrogation', and we'll have ourselves a transfer. Bring her back when you're done." 

Ardelia looked surprised at the sight of the restraints. "You put her in cuffs?" 

"Yes, ma'am. She's under arrest." He shrugged. "I don't put them on her when she's in the room. She's minded her manners so far." 

"Also, I'd appreciate it if you didn't disclose this to anyone." 

"Okay," he said. 

"I mean it. It's very important." 

"Ma'am," he said, "how bout you have another look at my ID?" He showed her obligingly. His ID and badge indicated he was a captain. 

"I am aware of how politics works, Chief," he said, grinning. "I'll keep your secret." 

"So can I see her?" 

"Sure," he said. "Let me get her." He opened the door to the room and stuck his head inside. Ardelia heard him ask if she was awake, and then told her to come to the door. A female voice replied, faintly. Ardelia's knees trembled. 

She was certainly grateful to hear it. Despite it all, Ardelia did not want the death of Clarice's daughter on her hands. Part of her reason for coming was to assuage her conscience for the arrest gone so horribly wrong. 

Susana Alvarez Lecter shuffled to the door. She wore only a hospital johnny and seemed strained with the effort. She looked pale and wan. Her face was thankfully unmarked, although her abdomen was heavily bandaged. The johnny bagged open at her arm and Ardelia could see a large black and blue mark beginning at her ribcage. In one hand she wheeled her IV pole with her.

"Why can't they just question me in here?" she asked her guard. Then she saw Ardelia and her eyes went wide for just a moment. Then her face closed up entirely. 

"It'll do you some good to get out and about," the trooper said. "Now come on. You know the drill." Susana complied, putting her hands behind her back without complaint. The trooper cuffed her quickly, put her IV pole into one of her hands, and gestured to Ardelia. 

"Go on now," he said. "She's all yours."

Ardelia shook her head. She held out a hand. 

"Here, let me take that pole for you," she said. Susana said nothing, but let her take it. She accompanied Ardelia through the hall without a word. Ardelia noted with some guilt how slowly she was walking. A few people stopped and stared, unaccustomed to seeing a patient in the ICU in cuffs. Susana did not seem to mind. She walked with her head slightly down, as if the effort of walking took up most of her resources. 

She saw the lounge up ahead. As he had said, it was a large room with tables for visitors and family to wait in. There was only a few people seated around one table. Ardelia decided that it would work. She gestured to a nearby table, far away from the other occupied table. Before Susana sat down, Ardelia gave her a friendly look. 

"I'll take those off you if you behave," she said breezily. Susana was dangerous, but too badly injured to put up a ruckus. It would make for a good opener. 

Susana took a moment before answering. "Yes, thank you." 

Ardelia slid her own key into the cuffs and removed them. Susana sat, looking warily at her. She rubbed her wrists and frowned at the red lines the cuffs had left.

"You look good," Ardelia said. "We were worried about you." 

"Worried about the Board of Inquiry you'd have to face for killing your suspect, you mean?" Susana's voice dripped with sarcasm. 

"I didn't tell you to run, Susana. Besides, I'm your friend. I'd like to help you." 

Susana tilted her head. Ardelia found herself troubled by Susana's maroon eyes and direct look. It reminded her far too much of Dr. Lecter. She found herself wondering if Susana possessed a sixth finger. Her eyes flicked off Susana's for a moment and down to her left hand on the table. It was normal. 

Susana grinned and raised her hand, revolving it to show the palm. "Looking for this?" she said. Between her middle and ring fingers was a barely visible scar. "They removed it when I was an infant." She flexed her hand. "Barely shows. Good work, don't you think?" 

"Yes," Ardelia said neutrally, trying not to show Susana that she had scored a point. "Now how about getting back to me helping you?"

"Help me? What could you possibly do to help me?" Susana asked.

Ardelia leaned forward. "Susana, we know you kidnapped Barney. And we know about Chicago." 

"Chicago? What about it?" 

"The three _Tattler_ reporters, four Chicago police officers, and FBI agent you killed there." 

Susana was silent for a long time. "You're crazy," she said. "I've never even been to Chicago. I was in DC. Except for visiting my grandfather's grave, which is apparently a crime." 

"We know you were in Chicago." Ardelia gave her a hard look, trying to suggest that lying would do no good.

"How?" Susana's eyes were wide with surprise. "Whatever you got, you're wrong. I've been in DC all this time. What makes you think I was in Chicago?"

"That's our secret." Ardelia folded her arms and gave Susana a smug look.

"You'll have to tell me at the trial," Susana pointed out. "Secret evidence doesn't cut it. This isn't Brazil." She crossed her arms and leaned back. 

"Susana, if you go to trial, you'll get the needle. Four cops are dead. They'll put you on death row for that." 

"I'm from Argentina," Susana said, "but I could have sworn I read something about 'innocent until proven guilty' in American law. Maybe they got it wrong when they translated it into Spanish." 

"We can prove you guilty," Ardelia said. "You want to risk your life, go ahead. And as long as we're on the subject of that, how's your family in Argentina? Your mom and dad, I mean." 

Susana stopped and shook her head deliberately. "I'm not talking about that." 

Ardelia shook her head in disapproval. "You're not in a position to pick what you'll talk about and what you won't. If you don't get the needle, you'll spend the rest of your life in prison. If you work with us, we can work with you. Chicago PD is baying for your blood, Susana. They want you bad. But the FBI can protect you, if you let us." 

…

The trooper sat in his chair, waiting for the FBI agent to come back with Susana. He knew that he had been charged with kidnapping. He also knew there was talk about some murders in Chicago. Sounded like they didn't have any evidence on her, though, or she would've been out of here quick. 

He had been picked for his ability to keep his mouth shut. And he didn't mind. The governor himself had told the trooper that if he did this little favor for the governor, he could count on a promotion in the near future. Possibly even the top spot, as the current head of the state police was due to retire soon. 

And Susana was not a difficult prisoner. Far from it. Most prisoners were belligerent and nasty. They spat on you and cursed and yelled, as if that would change a blessed thing. Susana had been polite to a fault and was compliant when he told her what to do. As he had told her when she regained consciousness, he would treat her as well as she treated him. So far, he didn't think this was bad duty at all. Even though at times he felt like a babysitter. 

An older woman in a business suit came up to him. 

"Excuse me," she said with a heavy Spanish accent. "Is this the room of Susana Alvarez?" 

"Yes ma'am, it is. She's not here right now." 

"My name is Luisa Sanchez. I am with the Argentinian embassy. I would like to see her." 

The trooper had been prepared for this. As a foreign citizen, Susana had the right to contact her embassy. As he had been instructed, he did not argue.

"She's with an FBI agent right now," he said. "If you'd like to wait, ma'am, she'll be back in a few." 

"Do you know how long she will be?" 

"I'm not sure, ma'am. You're more than welcome to have a seat. Or you can get some coffee at the vending machine down the hall. It's not too bad if you put extra sugar in it." 

"Thank you," she said. "I will come back." 

"As soon as she's back, I'll let you see her," he promised. 

The woman left, her heels clicking up the hallway. The trooper sighed. He never saw the woman again. 

…

Ardelia was not happy with how things were going. After an hour of cajoling, arguing, and outright threatening, she had zippo to show for it. And she didn't think it would get better anytime soon. She had the sickening feeling that Susana knew that the case against her was very weak. 

Susana did not seem frightened of what might happen to her. She had dared Ardelia to try her on a few occasions. Ardelia wasn't lying about the Chicago police department – they did want Susana in a Chicago courtroom, as soon as they possibly could. It was the Chicago DA who was pressing for a deal. 

"Look," Ardelia tried again, "think of how it's going to play for a jury. You're Lecter's daughter. All of a sudden, three murders take place, two copycatting Lecter murders. All three were Tattler reporters who wrote about Lecter. Dr. Lecter's old guard ends up kidnapped and stuck in his old cell a week later. And ever so conveniently, you entered this country three days before the first murder." 

"I was in DC," Susana replied for the tenth time. "That's what my plane tickets said. And I've never met Barney. I've heard about him, though. He must've really let himself go, if some girl like me managed to overpower him." 

"Where was your hotel?" Ardelia decided it was time to quit letting Susana get in these little digs. Poking a few holes in her story might do the trick, or at least get Ardelia up on the psychological scoreboard. 

"I didn't have a reservation. I was trying to save some money. Youth hostels and such." Susana shrugged, looking like a perfectly innocent student.

"And if we check the hostels, are we going to find you stayed there? I don't think so, Susana." 

"Here and there. A few cheap hotels, where you pay cash. They didn't ask me to sign anything." She leaned sideways in her chair and threw a leg over the armrest nonchalantly. 

"Sure, Susana. Think a jury will buy that? You think we don't know you? You're just like your dad, Susana. You wouldn't stay in a cheap hotel. So fine. No deal, you go to trial. Enjoy death row." 

"If you had all this proof, you wouldn't be offering me a deal. Just confess to all these crimes because of who your father is, and we'll just lock you in jail for the rest of your life instead of killing you. If not, we'll kill you. Sure. Go ahead then. Try it." She gave Ardelia a smirk. "You know, maybe I should call a lawyer and end this now,…" 

"We may have to," Ardelia promised grimly. "You want a lawyer? Fine. I'll take you back to your room and let you make the call. We can do this the hard way." 

"The embassy's handling that for me," Susana said breezily, as if it was a minor visa matter. "I called them this morning, before you got here." 

Ardelia's mouth twitched, but she tried not to show surprise. If Susana had called her embassy, the likelihood of a backroom deal had just dropped tremendously. Not with the Argentine ambassador poking his nose in. 

"You called them, huh? Sounds like you knew something was wrong," was all Ardelia could think to come with. She had to think of something else. "I can put the cuffs back on you, you know," she threatened. 

Susana tilted her head and gave her a surprised look. "Why, Agent Mapp. Putting restraints on a prisoner because they won't falsely confess? I believe that's torture."

"You've studied up on your rights quite a bit for such a little innocent." Ardelia said mockingly. Privately, she thought that Hannibal Lecter must have trained his daughter very well.

"I _am_ under arrest," Susana said. "I _do _have rights. You know, Agent Mapp, you really ought to bone up on criminal law a bit more." She smirked again, showing Ardelia small, even white teeth. "Here I am a foreigner and I'm reminding you of things like that. Isn't that a shame? And you a section chief of the F…B…I." She drew out the words in the same mocking manner her father had used. 

Ardelia's teeth clenched. This woman, this _girl_, who had been in diapers when Ardelia was on active duty, was winning the battle. Nothing Ardelia had said could even get under her skin. And Susana shared her father's talent at finding little ways to needle Ardelia: with her plays on Ardelia's guilt, her open scorn for the case against her, and any little thing she could find.. Then it hit her: she was playing the game by Susana's rules. 

"Yes, I am part of the FBI," she said. "Your mother was too, once." 

"I know that," Susana said, uninterested. 

"Until she fled the country with Lecter. How's he doing anyhow? Killing anyone else? Eating them?" 

Susana shook her head, but not before Ardelia saw a flash of anger in her eyes. _Good. Keep it up._

"Did he ever teach you about cannibalism? Did you maybe get liver for dinner, real human liver? Is that what made you like this?" 

Susana leaned forward, her eyes suddenly aflame. Although wounded, she was still dangerous. Ardelia grinned internally. She'd found the chink in Susana's armor. 

"Shut up about my father. That is E goddam nuff from you." 

"E goddam nuff? I guess you learned a little from your mother after all. She used to say that. Before Lecter brainwashed her." 

Suddenly, Susana's eyes widened in surprise for the first time since the negotiations – if you could call them that – had begun. Her eyes tracked something above and behind Ardelia. 

"Look at me," Ardelia said. "Look at me when I'm talking to you. I'm not done yet, kiddo." 

From behind her came a woman's voice. Hearing it chilled Ardelia to the bone. 

"Ardelia Mapp. Well, it has been a while, hasn't it?" 

Ardelia's jaw dropped and her blood slowly turned to water. The cold muzzle of a gun pressed the soft spot behind her ear.

"Don't turn around, Ardelia. I'm armed." 

"Clarice?" Ardelia whispered. 

"Just stay there." 

Clarice Starling surveyed her daughter. Her lips pressed together in rage. _Never mind that, just get her out of here._ She wore a simple, elegant suit. Over her left shoulder was an attractive leather briefcase. In her right hand, tight against her body where the people sitting across the room wouldn't see it, was a cut-down .45. 

"Susana, honey, are you all right? Can you walk?" 

"Yes," Susana said, "but not fast." She favored Ardelia with a victorious grin. 

"That's okay. Get up now. " She prodded Ardelia with the gun. "Ardelia, put your hands on the table where I can see them. Susana's going to search you now. If you move, I'll blow your head off." 

Ardelia heard her friend's voice and realized she was quite serious. She did not know whether to be elated or sick. For years, she had envisioned this day. She had wondered what she would think when she saw Clarice's face for the first time. Now she knew: she would be wondering if she would live long enough to get the letter of censure. 

"Clarice, what are you doing?" 

"Getting ready to put a .45 through your brain if you don't do what I said." A click underscored the threat. Ardelia raised her hands and placed them palm down on the table. A moment later, Susana shuffled around the table. Her fingers slid into Ardelia's pockets. 

"Atta girl. She'll have a gun, handcuffs, her ID, and a sat phone. Get 'em all." 

Susana removed the items and put them on a nearby table where Ardelia could not reach them. 

"Give me the handcuffs," Clarice directed. "Good. Now put them on her. Ardelia, you know the drill. Hands behind your back." 

Ten minutes ago, Ardelia had believed that defeat consisted of not getting a confession out of Susana Alvarez. Now, she knew it was much worse. The handcuffs clicked on, and Susana double locked them. _Shit. You had to teach her to double-lock the cuffs, didn't you, Clarice?_ . 

"Two pairs of handcuffs?" Clarice asked. "Why two?" 

"One set are mine," Ardelia explained. 

"And the other set were put on my critically injured daughter." The rage in Clarice's voice was palpable. 

"I didn't put them on her, Clarice. The trooper at her door did." 

Clarice let the strap of the briefcase slide over her left arm until it reached the ground. Her attention and the gun remained on Ardelia. 

"Take the briefcase and go into the bathroom over there. There are clothes in it for you. Bring the gown back here, though," she told her daughter. Her tone was firm and commanding, as if giving orders to an arrest squad.

Susana took the briefcase and headed for the bathroom. Ardelia's jaw dropped: although slower than normal, Susana's pace was easily twice as fast as her trudge into the lounge. Playing possum. She should have known. Better to concentrate on Clarice, though. 

"Clarice, don't do this. You don't want to do this." 

"Oh yes I do," Clarice said. "As a matter of fact, Ardelia, I want very badly to shoot you right now. So how about you shut the fuck up and quit tempting me." 

"Clarice, I never meant for this to happen." 

"It was your damn op!" Clarice hissed. "If you had to arrest her, where the hell was the SWAT team? Where the hell were real, trained FBI? Where'd you get those yokels from? Barnum and Bailey Circus? My little girl almost _died_ because of you. And at my father's _grave_? Is nothing sacred to you? Couldn't you have let her have her visit and gotten her going back to DC?" 

"Your little girl killed nine people," Ardelia said. 

"You can't prove that," Clarice said. "I know how it is. Charge her with being her father's daughter. Try her in the press. Death sentence or life sentence, all the same." 

"That's not true, Clarice. You know that." 

"Shut your goddam yap right now," Clarice said evenly, "or I'll loosen a few of your teeth." 

Clarice crossed around and sat across from Ardelia. The family at the other table glanced at them, sensing tension, and left. For the first time in twenty-seven years, Ardelia beheld her friend's face. The years had been kind to Clarice. She had a few crow's feet in the corners of her eyes and a few wrinkles here and there, but she looked not terribly different from twenty-seven years before.

It was not a happy reunion. Clarice's mouth was a thin line of held-in rage. Her eyes burned at Ardelia. Clarice's left hand was on the table. Her right hand was below the table. . Ardelia knew well that in it was the gun, probably a big .45 like Clarice had always liked. If she tried to scream or call for help, the big gun would boom and Ardelia would be missing most of her large intestine. 

"Clarice," she began, "I swear to God that it was an accident. I never meant for anything to happen to your daughter. I've waited so long for you, I can't tell you. Can't we just talk?"

"Not for long. I've got to fly." 

"If you take her, we'll track you down." 

"You haven't found us for twenty-seven years. I'm not worried. You should be more interested in the short term, Ardelia." 

"Clarice, if shooting me would take back what happened to Susana, I'd tell you to do it in a heartbeat. And there's a plainclothes trooper out there who is going to come looking for Susana in a while. She's under arrest, Clarice. You can't take her." 

"Goddam you, don't you tell me what I can't do," Clarice said. "Especially in regard to Susana." 

Ardelia shifted her weight. 

"So what have you been doing lately?" Clarice asked with a nasty smile. 

"I run Behavioral Sciences," Ardelia said. 

"That explains why you can't manage a simple arrest." Clarice's eyes flashed. 

"How about you?" 

"Oh, this and that," Clarice said. "Saving my daughter from cops who want to kill her. Nothing for you to profile me on." 

Susana came back from the bathroom, dressed in a simple T-shirt, jeans, and running jacket. She held her hospital gown in one hand and the briefcase in the other. She wore blue contact lenses to mask her most striking feature. 

"The ghost Clarice," Ardelia mused. 

Mother and daughter looked at her curiously. Neither mentioned it. 

"Stand up, Ardelia. Susana, your knife is in the briefcase. Get it out." 

Susana dipped her hand into the briefcase and came out with the Harpy. She looked questioningly at her mother. Ardelia could tell what she was thinking. _She wants to kill me. Wants to know if her mother is going to let her cut on me. _

The more shocking thing was that Clarice knew, and didn't seem to care. 

"Cut her clothes off," Clarice directed. "Put the gown on her." 

"I want to get her holster first," Susana objected. "So I can carry her gun." 

"You don't need her holster, Miss Chickabee." Susana looked surprised to hear her childhood nickname. "I'll keep her gun, thanks." 

Susana stepped behind Ardelia. Ardelia felt the blade rip up one shirt sleeve, then across her back towards the other sleeve. 

"Lucky for you mommy came to bail you out," Ardelia said viciously. 

Susana said nothing, but brought the knife a measured half-inch closer to Ardelia's skin. The blade dug in and stung as it opened a shallow but long cut along Ardelia's back and shoulder. Ardelia got the hint and shut up. 

When she had hacked through the sleeve, Susana pulled the remains of the shirt off Ardelia. She grabbed a bra strap glaringly white against Ardelia's dark skin. With a quick, measured pull she cut it. 

"What are you doing?" Clarice asked, surprised. 

Ardelia didn't even try to catch the flood of Spanish Susana replied with. She thought she heard the word _nerviosa_ but was not sure. 

Susana worked the gown over Ardelia's shoulders and then went to work cutting off her pants. When they, too, joined her bra and shirt on the pile of murdered clothing on the floor, Ardelia realized what was coming. Susana cut off her panties as well and then gathered up the clothing. She threw it away in a nearby wastebasket. 

Ardelia was a good deal taller than Susana, and the gown was very short on her. With a sinking feeling, she realized that having her undergarments cut off was intended to make her nervous and preoccupied. What was worse was that it was working. 

Clarice moved in and took Ardelia's right arm with her left. Clarice's right arm was tight in against her body. The muzzle of the .45 pressed into Ardelia's side. Susana took her other arm. 

"Okay, Ardelia. If you do what I tell you, you'll live to see another day. Maybe run someone else's kid over. If you scream, if you put up a fuss, or any of that, I'll shoot you dead. We clear?" 

"Yes," Ardelia said. "Clarice…we were friends once. Don't forget that." 

"That's why you're still alive," Clarice said. When she spoke again, her voice was less angry. "Ardelia, listen to me. I loved you _like _a sister once. Susana _is _my daughter. Don't make me choose, cause I won't choose you."

The three headed out of the room and towards the elevator. Susana made sure to keep her face turned away from the hallway where the trooper sat in his chair, awaiting her return. Ardelia hoped like hell that he might notice. She tried not to be crushed when he did not. Her own fault, she decided. She had never given him a time limit. She noticed the pull on her arms. Clarice held her arm firmly, in the controlling manner of an arresting officer. Susana's grip on her arm was different. She leaned on Ardelia as she went, pulling on Ardelia's arm to keep her upright. In the elevator, she leaned against the wall and squinched her eyes shut in obvious discomfort. She was winded with the effort.

"Clarice," Ardelia said quietly. "Look at your daughter. She's in critical condition. I know you love her. But look at her, she might be bleeding out. Let her get the help she needs." 

"I'm not bleeding out," Susana muttered. 

"Don't you worry about taking care of my daughter," Clarice said. "I have all that under control." 

She hit the button for two floors down. Ardelia sighed. She wondered whether or not Clarice planned to kill her. It seemed she wouldn't. She could have killed her, or let Susana kill her, in the lounge with little effort. Or maybe she was just looking for a place to hide the body. 

When the doors opened, Clarice frogmarched Ardelia out into the hallway. Just by the reception desk was a bathroom. Clarice steered her group towards it. She pointed to a bench nearby. 

"Sit down," she said to her daughter. Susana sat down gracelessly on it. 

"Wait here. I'll just be a minute," Clarice said. 

"_Vas a matar a ella?"_ Susana asked. Ardelia knew enough Spanish to know what the question was. _Are you going to kill her?_

Clarice merely gave her daughter an irritated look. 

Ardelia knew better than to kick up a fuss now, so she waited until Clarice pulled her into the bathroom and made her sit on the toilet before speaking. 

"Clarice—," 

"Shut _up_, dammit." 

"Killing me will just make things worse." 

"I'm not going to kill you. Sit on the can there." Clarice approached her from the side, warily. She took the second set of handcuffs and fastened them to the pipe running into the toilet. The other cuff she fastened around the chain of the handcuffs Ardelia wore. Ardelia was now fixed to the toilet and could not rise. 

"I'm not going to kill you. I'm going to do worse. I'm going to let you swing in the wind on this. See how you like it when the FBI turns on you. I'm taking my daughter home and getting her taken care of." 

"Clarice, she's a killer." 

"So am I. What's the difference?"

"I don't know you," Ardelia said despairingly. "How could you change like this? How could you turn your back on everything you believed in?" 

Clarice snorted and pulled out a roll of duct tape from her briefcase, which apparently had everything you needed to rescue your daughter and hold FBI agents hostage. 

"Old saying, Ardelia. You can fall in love with the Bureau, but it doesn't love you back. You chose the Bureau. I chose my love and my child. How could I change like this? Jesus Christ on a _pogostick! _How could I _not?" _

She ripped off a length of duct tape and slapped it over Ardelia's mouth, winding it around the back of her head. 

"She's all I have, Ardelia. I lost my father and I lost my husband. I almost lost her once. I won't lose her again. Not to you, not to anyone. I don't care what it takes and I don't care what she did. If you had kids, you'd understand." 

With that, Clarice stepped out of the bathroom and closed the door firmly on one of the last links with her old life. She saw Susana seated on the bench, her eyes closed and her mouth drawn down in a quivering bow of pain. 

"Get up, Miss Chickabee," she said. "We got to get going." Susana's eyes opened. 

"Don't call me that," she muttered. 

"After what I just did for you? Some gratitude." 

"We're not away yet," Susana said, rising slowly to her feet. 

Clarice walked her daughter into the elevator. "C'mon, Susana. All we need to do is get outside the hospital." 

"We have to get out of the country," Susana pointed out. 

"Taken care of. There's one thing you have to promise me, though." 

"What?" 

"Enough settling accounts. Close the books. You did what you set out to do." 

"Not all of them, though." 

Clarice rolled her eyes. "Are you crazy? Who else did you have in mind?" 

"Mapp." 

"She's upstairs handcuffed to a toilet in your hospital gown. I think that's enough. I mean it, Susana. Close the books. The accounts are settled." She pointed a warning finger at her daughter. 

"All right." 

"I want to hear you say it." 

"The accounts are settled. The books are closed." 

"Very good." 

On the ground floor, they headed through the halls to the main exit. Susana saw a limousine with DC plates idling outside and looked at her mother questioningly. Clarice nodded. She was concerned, though. Susana was limping noticeably and Clarice didn't like her color. 

So she pushed her daughter most of the way to the limo and got her inside. A man and woman were already inside the limousine's spacious passenger compartment. As the limo pulled away from the curb, the man crouched on the floor of the limo and pulled out a small black bag. 

"_Buenos dias, Susana,_" he said. "_Soy Dr. Perez, y ella es Flora, mi enfermera." _The limousine turned smoothly onto the street, and carried along sedately until it reached the highway, where it merged swiftly into traffic. Police were unable to find it until it had already delivered its passengers and returned to the limousine company in order to pick up another passenger. 

Ardelia Mapp was, as Clarice Starling had predicted, made the scapegoat for the escape of Susana Alvarez Lecter. She was suspended without pay, the first time in the history of the Behavioral Sciences unit that its active Section Chief had been so disciplined. She left the Bureau shortly thereafter and sold her duplex. 

Barney sold his story to the National Tattler and made fifteen thousand dollars. After that, he lived in relative obscurity. He received a package in the mail from an anonymous source containing a very attractive print of the Vermeer in Buenos Aires. 

A privately owned Lear jet took off from Washington, DC the day of Susana Alvarez's escape from custody. The owner was a Uruguayan company which had offices in a deserted office park in Montevideo. The listed destination was Albuquerque, New Mexico. As this was in the continental United States, no check by U.S. customs was necessary. The plane never landed in New Mexico. It continued on to Mexico, where it refueled. It continued on to Montevideo. The passengers did not. They transferred on the runway to another plane, also a Lear. 

The plane normally held twelve people, but now could hold only eight. This was because four seats had been removed to make room for a gurney and medical supplies. The plane was well equipped to keep a badly injured but stable patient comfortable for the duration of the flight. 

Susana Alvarez Lecter's injuries healed in time. She continued on with her life, satisfied that the accounts had been settled. She honored the promise made to her mother in a Wheeling Hospital elevator. The books remained closed. 

The LECCOPY murders, the murder of Margot Verger, and the kidnapping of Barney remain unsolved. 

FIN 

_Author's note: _

This was a fun story to write, and I'm appreciative of all who thought it was a fun story to read. Ultimately, the votes for life or death for Susana were 3 in favor of death, 2 in favor of life. One vote for death was admittedly torn, so I decided to end the story with the ideas that came (life). I may take a page from DianaLecter and release an 'alternate ending' chapter to satisfy the bloodthirsty. If you're one of those, once it's up, everyone ought to be happy. Even so, it was sort of like 2 ¼ to 2 ¾ -- tough call. 

Tell you what, too: I'll hold a little contest. The person who can correctly identify the origin of Clarice's nickname for her daughter will get the 'alternate ending' chapter 24 hours before I post it. Here's a hint: think movies, think actors. (Who says Luna should get all the fun?) Well, that and you have to provide an email address. 

The number of years have switched around a few times in this story. That's not a goof. Settling Accounts _follows the book canon. Most of Hannibal takes place in 1998 (although Mr. Harris never comes out and say this, there's a reference to Krendler getting away with the smear on Starling because of all the uproar over the presidential impeachment. As you know, unless you spent the past few years in a cave, that was in 1998. The end of Hannibal is set in 2000, as they make a reference to 'at the millenium'. Thus, Settling Accounts does take place 25 years after the end of Hannibal, but in other places, the numbers have to change. _

Although Settling Accounts takes place in the future, I deliberately did not attempt to make much of the future with new gadgets and stuff. That's largely because this is a Hannibal fic, not a sci-fi story. A Susana armed with a phaser and beaming herself out of trouble just wouldn't have been as much fun. Where I have invented futuristic things, I did so as details. Tabletop DNA scanners don't exist yet, and the FBI does not issue satellite phones yet either. But I bet they'll be around in 23 years. 

I also doubt this will be the last we see of Susana Alvarez Lecter. I have plans for a prequel set in Buenos Aires, and the GD will be part of it. That'll probably take a bit, as I have to do some background research. 

Thank you for sticking it out this long, Dear Reader, and good night.


End file.
